Revelation 11

Today’s Passage: Revelation 11

The interlude continues, and it gets stranger before it gets glorious. John is handed a measuring rod and told to measure the temple of God and the altar and the worshipers, but to leave out the outer courtyard, because it has been given to the nations who will trample the holy city for forty-two months. Then two witnesses appear, given power to prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth, and they are called the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. Fire comes from their mouths against anyone who tries to harm them. They can shut the sky, turn water to blood, and strike the earth with plagues, which is to say they carry the authority of Elijah and of Moses. And then, when they have finished their testimony, the beast comes up out of the Abyss, makes war on them, overpowers them and kills them. Their bodies lie unburied in the street of the great city while the whole world looks on and celebrates and sends each other gifts. Three and a half days later the breath of life from God enters them, they stand up, a voice calls them home, and they go up in a cloud while their enemies watch. An earthquake follows, a tenth of the city falls, and the survivors are terrified and give glory to the God of heaven. Then the second woe passes, the seventh angel finally sounds, and heaven does not describe another disaster. It sings. And what it sings is the end of the whole story, announced as something already done.

As you read, hold this: God’s witnesses may be silenced and left lying in the street, but they are not abandoned, and the seventh trumpet announces the end of the story in one sentence: the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.

Revelation 11:1–6 (BSB)

¹ Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff and was told, “Go and measure the temple of God and the altar, and count the number of worshipers there. ² But exclude the courtyard outside the temple. Do not measure it, because it has been given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for 42 months. ³ And I will empower my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” ⁴ These witnesses are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. ⁵ If anyone wants to harm them, fire proceeds from their mouths and devours their enemies. In this way, anyone who wants to harm them must be killed. ⁶ These witnesses have power to shut the sky so that no rain will fall during the days of their prophecy, and power to turn the waters into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they wish.

John is handed a rod and told to measure (μετρέω) metreō, pronounced met-REH-oh. Strong's G3354, to measure, to mark out as one's own. Metreō means simply to measure, to take the dimensions of a thing with a rod or a line, and in the Greek Old Testament it is the workaday word for exactly that. But watch what the prophets do with it. When Ezekiel is shown a man with a measuring reed going over the temple, nothing is being built; the measuring itself is the message, God taking possession of a house that had been left desolate. When Zechariah sees a man going out with a line to measure Jerusalem, the angel stops him and promises that the city will be too full for walls and that the LORD Himself will be a wall of fire around it. So in prophetic language, to measure is to lay claim, to number, to say this is Mine and I have counted it. That is why John is told to count the worshipers as well as the building. He is not doing architecture. He is being shown that God knows the size of His own congregation, down to the last name, and has drawn a line around it. And the outer court is left unmeasured, not because God has lost track of it, but because it is being given over for a season to be trampled. A believer standing in a world that feels handed over to something hostile needs both halves of that. What can be trampled will be trampled. What God has measured is His. , and notice what he is told to measure and what he is told to leave alone. The temple of God, the altar, and the worshipers: measure those. The outer courtyard: leave it out. That distinction is the shape of the whole chapter, and if you catch it here you will not be frightened by anything that follows. There is an inner thing that God has marked as His own and an outer thing that will be trampled, and both are true at the same time.

Forty-two months, and then 1,260 days, which is the same span counted a second way. The text gives them plainly, and readers have understood them variously: some take them as an actual measured period, some as a symbol for the whole age between our Lord’s ascension and His return, some as a specific past crisis. This study takes no side. What is worth seeing regardless of how you read the arithmetic is that both figures are fixed. The trampling has a number of months attached to it. The witnessing has a number of days. Nothing here runs on and on at the discretion of the enemy. And notice that the two numbers are the same length, which means the trampling and the testifying happen together. The church is never given a season of persecution in which it is not also given a season of witness.

Then the witnesses themselves. They are clothed in sackcloth, which is the dress of mourning and of a preacher calling for repentance, and the detail tells you their tone. They are not celebrities. They come in the clothes of grief, the way prophets always have. And they are identified by a picture: “the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.” Zechariah had seen a lampstand of pure gold with two olive trees beside it, fed by a pipe of oil that never ran dry, and when he asked what the olive trees were he was told:

"So he said, “These are the two anointed ones who are standing beside the Lord of all the earth.”" Zechariah 4:14 (BSB)

An olive tree beside a lampstand exists for one purpose: to keep the light burning. That is the whole job. And the great word of that vision in Zechariah is the one every servant of God has had to learn the hard way, that the work is done not by might nor by power but by the Spirit of the LORD. So before you are told what these witnesses can do, you have been told where the oil comes from. Their power is not theirs.

And they are given remarkable power. Fire from their mouths devours anyone who tries to harm them. They can shut the sky so no rain falls. They can turn water into blood and strike the earth with plagues. That is Elijah’s drought and Moses’ plagues put into two pairs of hands, and it means these two carry the authority of the Law and the Prophets in the last hour of their testimony. Notice, though, that fire proceeds from their mouths. Their weapon is a word. Jeremiah had been told long before that God would make His words in the prophet’s mouth a fire, and this is that promise standing up and walking. For as long as their commission lasts, they are untouchable. Nothing can lay a finger on them.

Revelation 11:7–10 (BSB)

⁷ When the two witnesses have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will wage war with them, and will overpower and kill them. ⁸ Their bodies will lie in the street of the great city—figuratively called Sodom and Egypt—where their Lord was also crucified. ⁹ For three and a half days all peoples and tribes and tongues and nations will view their bodies and will not permit them to be laid in a tomb. ¹⁰ And those who dwell on the earth will gloat over them and celebrate and send one another gifts, because these two prophets had tormented them.

Read the first four words of verse seven before anything else, because they carry the weight of the whole passage: “When the two witnesses have finished their testimony.” Not when they slip, not when their protection fails, not when the enemy finally gets strong enough. When they have finished. The beast cannot touch them for one moment before their work is done, and when their work is done, God permits it. That is the order of things, and it has been the comfort of martyrs for twenty centuries. No servant of God has ever been taken early. The fire from their mouths did not run out; the commission was completed.

Here the beast enters this book for the first time, coming up out of the Abyss. Chapters ahead will have a great deal more to say about him, and when we get there we will teach what the text teaches. What we will not do, here or anywhere in this series, is tell you who he is. Christians have named candidates in every generation for two thousand years, always with confidence and always, so far, wrongly. It is not our business, and hunting for a name is a very good way to miss what John is actually showing you. What he is showing you is this: there is a real and organized hostility toward God in this world, it makes war on those who witness (μάρτυς) martys, pronounced MAR-toos. Strong's G3144, a witness, one who testifies to what he has seen. Martys is the plain Greek word for a witness, a man who stands up in court and says what he saw. It carried no religious weight at all; it was a legal word, and the Law of Moses had made the number two famous, since a matter was established by the testimony of two or three witnesses and never by one. That is why there are two here. But something happened to this word inside the Christian church, and the history of it is written into our own language. So many of those who stood up and said what they had seen of Jesus were killed for saying it that martys stopped meaning merely a witness and came to mean one who dies for the testimony. Our word martyr is that Greek word, unchanged, carried over intact. Understand what that tells you about what the church expected. Not that every witness dies, but that telling the truth about Christ in a hostile world costs, and the early believers made no attempt to hide it. This book has already given the title to Jesus Himself, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead. He testified, and it cost Him His life, and He rose. Every witness after Him walks that same road in that same order, and none of them walks it alone. to Him, and it is sometimes permitted to win.

Then comes the indignity, and John does not soften it. Their bodies lie in the street. Not buried, not covered, left out in public where every passerby can look. For three and a half days the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations come and stare, and no one is permitted to lay them in a tomb. Understand how deep an insult that was to the ancient mind. To leave a body unburied was to declare it worthless, to say that the man’s very existence deserved no dignity at all. And the world throws a holiday over it. They gloat, they celebrate, they send one another gifts, and John tells us exactly why: “because these two prophets had tormented them.” That is a sentence to sit with. Their crime was that their preaching stung. They had told the truth and the truth made people miserable, and nobody sends gifts for a preacher who never troubled anyone. There is a hard word here for those who want the world’s approval and God’s service at the same time, and there is a gentler one for anyone who has ever been despised for saying what Scripture says. The world’s relief at your silence is not evidence that you were wrong.

The city is named in an odd way, “figuratively called Sodom and Egypt”, with the note that it is “where their Lord was also crucified”. Readers understand that description differently, and we will not settle it. Sodom is a name for corruption, Egypt for the house of slavery that would not let God’s people go. What the phrase does at minimum is to refuse to let any city, however holy its history, congratulate itself. A place can hold the right buildings and the right memories and still behave like Sodom and Egypt. And the last clause quietly puts the witnesses where every faithful servant belongs, in the same street as their Lord. They are killed where He was killed. That is not an accident of geography; it is a statement of fellowship.

Revelation 11:11–14 (BSB)

¹¹ But after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God entered the two witnesses, and they stood on their feet, and great fear fell upon those who saw them. ¹² And the witnesses heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Come up here.” And they went up to heaven in a cloud as their enemies watched them. ¹³ And in that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand were killed in the quake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. ¹⁴ The second woe has passed. Behold, the third woe is coming shortly.

“But after the three and a half days.” Everything turns on that little word but, and it is the word this book keeps in reserve for exactly such moments. The party is still going on. The bodies are still in the street. And then the breath of life from God enters them. The phrase is deliberately ancient: it is the breath God breathed into the first man’s nostrils in the garden, and it is the breath Ezekiel prophesied to in a valley of dry bones, when a whole army stood up on its feet. John even uses the same posture. They stood on their feet. God has done this before, and He is not out of breath.

Then a loud voice from heaven says two words, “Come up here”, and they go up in a cloud while their enemies watch them. Do not hurry past that last clause. The world had gathered to see them shamed, and the world is still standing there when God vindicates them. He does not slip them out the back door. The same eyes that gloated over the bodies watch them rise. There is a principle in that which runs through the whole Bible: God’s vindication of His servants is public, and He is in no hurry to do it privately. He answered the cross with an empty tomb in the same city, before the same authorities.

Then the earthquake, and a tenth of the city falls, and seven thousand are killed. And now something happens in this book that has not happened before, and you should feel the difference. Back in chapter nine, after far worse, the survivors would not repent. Here “the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.” Readers differ over whether that is genuine repentance or only the panic of people who finally recognize a power greater than their own, and the text does not say outright. But notice that the phrase “gave glory to God” is language Scripture normally uses of true turning, and notice also the arithmetic. In chapter nine a third died and none repented. Here a tenth dies and the rest give glory. The proportions have reversed. Whatever else this scene is, it is the first time in the trumpet cycle that the terrible things achieve what terrible things were sent to achieve, and it happens right after two men who had been killed for their testimony stood up alive. It was not the earthquake that changed them. It was the resurrection they watched.

Then the watchman’s voice again, counting: “The second woe has passed. Behold, the third woe is coming shortly.” One more.

Revelation 11:15–19 (BSB)

¹⁵ Then the seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and loud voices called out in heaven: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever.” ¹⁶ And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, ¹⁷ saying: “We give thanks to You, O Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was, because You have taken Your great power and have begun to reign. ¹⁸ The nations were enraged, and Your wrath has come. The time has come to judge the dead and to reward Your servants the prophets, as well as the saints and those who fear Your name, both small and great—and to destroy those who destroy the earth.” ¹⁹ Then the temple of God in heaven was opened, and the ark of His covenant appeared in His temple. And there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and a great hailstorm.

Now stop, and take your time, because this is the summit of everything since chapter eight and one of the great moments of the Bible. Six trumpets have brought hail and fire, a burning mountain in the sea, a star called Wormwood, darkness, locusts, and an army past counting. The seventh sounds at last, and what comes is not an eighth disaster. It is a shout. Loud voices in heaven, and one sentence: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom (βασιλεία) basileia, pronounced bas-il-EH-ah. Strong's G932, kingship, royal rule, kingdom. Basileia means kingship, royal rule, sovereignty, and only after that does it mean the territory such rule covers. That order matters more than almost anything else in this verse. The announcement is not first about real estate; it is about who is on the throne. This was the word constantly on the lips of the Lord Jesus, who came into Galilee preaching that the kingdom of God was at hand, who taught His disciples to pray Your kingdom come, and who told a Roman governor that His kingdom was not from this world. Notice that heaven does not say the kingdoms of this world have been destroyed. It says the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord. The world is not being scrapped. It is changing hands. This is the same earth, the one God made and called good and has never stopped loving, coming back under its rightful King. And the verb is in the past. Not it will become, but it has become, spoken while chapters of trouble still lie ahead in the book. Heaven is so certain of the outcome that it sings about it as finished. That is the tense a Christian is entitled to live in. of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever.”

Say that sentence out loud and let it settle, because it is the answer to every question the trumpets have raised. Who is running this world, with its plagues and its armies and its street parties over dead prophets? He is. Not eventually, not in some sense, but really and finally and forever. Every empire that ever trampled a holy city held its power on a lease, and the lease is up. And notice that the singular is used, “the kingdom of the world”, as though all the rival powers of history were only ever one kingdom in different costumes, and now that one kingdom has one King. And He will reign forever and ever. No successor, no decline, no faction, no end. Six trumpets of trouble, and this is where it was always going.

Then the twenty-four elders come off their thrones. They have thrones of their own, and they fall on their faces, which is the only sane response when the real King takes His power. And their song has three movements. First, thanksgiving: “We give thanks to You, O Lord God Almighty (παντοκράτωρ) pantokratōr, pronounced pan-tok-RAT-ore. Strong's G3841, Almighty, the One who holds all things. Pantokratōr is built from pas, all, and a root meaning to hold or to have strength, and it means the one who holds all things in his grip, the ruler of everything. It appears nine times in Revelation and almost nowhere else in the New Testament, which tells you how much this book leans on it. The Greek translators of the Old Testament had used it to render the great Hebrew title LORD of Hosts, the God with armies at His command. So when the elders address the Almighty, they are singing the oldest name Israel had for God as a warrior and a King, and they are singing it at the exact moment He takes His power. Notice also what they leave out. Everywhere earlier in this book God is described as the One who is and who was and who is to come, but here the third clause is dropped. He is not “to come” any longer. He has come, and He has begun to reign, and the future tense is no longer needed. That is one of the most beautiful small changes in Scripture. And notice the elders’ verb: they give thanks. Not “we congratulate You”, not “we are relieved”. They thank Him, as people do who have been waiting a very long time and have just watched a promise land. Learn to sing that ahead of time. , the One who is and who was, because You have taken Your great power and have begun to reign.”

Second, the reckoning: “The nations were enraged, and Your wrath has come.” The rage of the nations is not new, and the elders are quoting a song the church already knew by heart:

"Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together, against the LORD and against His Anointed One:" Psalm 2:1–2 (BSB)

Why do they rage. In vain, says the psalm, and the whole point of Psalm 2 is that the One enthroned in heaven is not alarmed by the conspiracy of kings. Revelation 11 is that psalm coming true. All the fury of the nations, which felt so enormous to a church being fed to the empire’s machinery, turns out to have been a tantrum against a settled decree.

Third, the accounting, and hear how carefully it is balanced. “The time has come to judge the dead and to reward Your servants the prophets, as well as the saints and those who fear Your name, both small and great.” Two things happen at once, and they must not be pulled apart. There is judgment, and there is reward, and the reward comes to a list that is deliberately broad: prophets, yes, and also plain saints, and also simply “those who fear Your name”, and then the clause that ought to make every ordinary believer look up, “both small and great”. Nobody in that congregation gets overlooked because their service was too obscure to notice. And then the final line, which is one of the most morally satisfying sentences in the Bible: “and to destroy those who destroy the earth.” Every ruin any tyrant ever made will be answered. Read it soberly, without a flicker of enjoyment, because these are real people under real judgment and John does not gloat and neither may we. But read it, and do not soften it either. A God who let the destroyers destroy forever would not be good.

And then the last verse, and it is a quiet thunderclap. “The temple of God in heaven was opened, and the ark of His covenant appeared in His temple.” Think of what that would have meant to a Jewish believer. The ark had been out of sight for six centuries, lost when Jerusalem fell, and even when it stood in the holy of holies only one man went in, once a year, with blood. Now the sanctuary is thrown open and the ark of His covenant is in plain view. God’s covenant, the promise He swore to His people, is not lost, not hidden, not forgotten, and no longer behind a curtain. The chapter that began with a measured temple on earth being trampled ends with the true temple in heaven standing wide open. Then lightning and rumblings and thunder and earthquake and hail, which in this book is always the signature of the God who came down on Sinai. He has kept every word.