Chapter 11

The first fourteen verses of chapter eleven conclude the parenthesis dealing with the heralds of the second advent. In these first fourteen verses we have a study of the two human heralds for the second advent.

One of the great privileges is to be a herald and before we look at the two human heralds of the second advent there are several passages which deal with the human herald of the first advent. The first of these is found in John 1:6-8, “There came into being a man,” That is the way the herald is introduced in the corrected translation; “sent from God whose name was John. This same one came for a witness, that he might bear witness concerning the light,” A witness means a herald, and he was a witness concerning the light, the first advent of Christ, “that all might believe through him [i.e. believe in the Lord Jesus Christ]. He was not that light, but came that he might bear witness to the light [the Lord Jesus Christ] ....”

Verses 14,15, “And the Word [the Lord Jesus Christ] became flesh [eternal God became true humanity], and tabernacled among us.” The word ‘tabernacled’ is used rather than ‘dwelt’ in the Greek because the presence of the Lord in Israel was the Shekina glory in the tabernacle, and the Shekina glory has come to earth; “and we beheld his glory, the glory of the uniquely-born one from the Father, full of grace and doctrine. John witnessed [or made a pronouncement] concerning him, and shouted, saying, ‘This is he of whom I spoke, “He who comes after me [first advent of Christ] has a higher rank than I, for he eternally existed before me”.’

Verse 29, “The next day he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’ ”

The herald of the first advent emphasised something entirely different than the second advent. He came to die; He came to go to the cross; He came to provide eternal salvation, the first time; the second time He comes to rule the world.

In John 3:28, “You yourselves bear witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ’ but, ‘I have been sent before him,’ as a herald.

Verse 35, “The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand.” That is why in verse 36 John was the one who made the issue clear: “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”

This is documentation for the fact that at the first advent of Christ there was both angelic and human heralds.

The setting for the two human heralds of the second advent are given in verses one and two of Revelation chapter eleven. The setting is the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem restored as a Jewish temple.

Verse 1, we have the sequential use of the conjunction kai translated “then.” Next we have the aorist passive indicative of the verb didomi. It means that he was given a surveying instrument. The subject is called kalamoj and it is a surveying instrument. The surveying instrument or measuring rod is compared to a staff or a rod, it was like a pole: the instrumental of association from r(abdoj, translated “rod” or “pole.” “Then a surveying instrument was given to me.” “To me” is the dative of indirect object from e)gw. The aorist tense of the verb to give is a constative aorist, it contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety. The passive voice: John as the apostle received the instrument. The declarative mood represents the verbal action from the viewpoint of reality.

The next phrase, “and the angel stood,” is not found in the original. It simply is translated, “and someone said,” the present active participle of the verb legw, “and someone said.” That “someone” is the King of Arms of the angelic college of heralds. The aoristic present is for punctiliar action. The King of Arms produces the action, the participle is circumstantial.

Now we have a mandate from the King of Arms. First of all, the present active imperative. Notice that John is still under authority. We have the verb e)geirw which we will translate “go up.” It means “get up and go.” In the imperative this form is used as an idiomatic formula, and it can be translated either come or go, here it is go. Then the aorist active imperative of metrew means to measure, “go up and measure.” The constative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety and implies the construction of a Jewish temple in Jerusalem in the middle of the Tribulation. The active voice: the apostle John is to produce the action, the imperative mood of command. “Go up and measure,” and then the accusative singular of direct object from the noun naoj, meaning temple, and with it the possessive genitive of qeoj, “the temple of God.”

Right now where the temple of God should be is an Islamic temple. The temple will contain, of course, the duplicates of all of the sacred furniture which describes the person and the work of Christ in the first advent. There would be the holy of holies containing a duplicate ark of the covenant, a mercy seat that would be constructed as before of gold and acacia wood, representing the hypostatic union.

Translation of verse one: “Then a surveying instrument was given to me [the apostle John]: and someone [the King of Arms] said, Go up and measure the temple of God.”

In front of the curtain separating the holy of holies from the holy place would be a golden altar of incense. This would be speaking of the fact that Jesus Christ, the God of Israel, is also the great High Priest through whom prayer is offered and answered. There would be the table of shewbread duplicated from Exodus chapter 25 and chapter 37. The table would be constructed of gold and acacia wood, emphasising the doctrine of the hypostatic union. On the table would be twelve loaves of bread which are a memorial to the twelve tribes of Israel. Placed in two parallel rows within the encircling crown is a reminder that God will fulfil the four unconditional covenants to Israel at the second advent. The twelve loaves of bread in the Tribulational temple are a reminder that God will sustain Israel — true Israel; being racial Israel is not enough. Jewish believers will be sustained during the Tribulation, they will have to learn from the temple things.

When John is measuring this temple in the middle of the Tribulation everything that tells the true history of Israel is there. All of the furniture is duplicated, even the lampstand which speaks of Christ the light of the world. John said that he came to bear witness to that light, that he came to announce Him. The Tribulational temple has all of these things and yet in spite of all that there are hundreds of thousands of Jews in that future day who will not believe in Christ.

The altar is mentioned specifically. The Greek word is qusiasthrion. It refers to the altar of burnt offerings in the forecourt of the temple at Jerusalem. The altar speaks of the saving work of Christ on the cross. The brass of the altar is a reminder that God the Father judged our sins after they were imputed to our Lord Jesus Christ. The burnt offerings speak of propitiation, the peace offering speaks of reconciliation; again, they talk of the saving work of Christ.

The temple in the middle of the Tribulation will have been reconstructed by Jews. However, the temple is rebuilt by unbelieving Jews who have ignored or rejected the doctrine found in the Torah, the Old Testament scriptures. They also have the book of Hebrews which the unbeliever will also reject. Temple worship for them will be ritual without reality. Temple worship in the Tribulation is revived under the dictator of Israel posing as Messiah and carrying the title “the false prophet.” In the middle of the Tribulation the false prophet or dictator of Israel permits a statue of the dictator of the revived Roman empire to be placed in the holy of holies. This is translated “the abomination of desolation” and it is found in Daniel 9:27; 11:31; 12:11; Matthew 24:15. Hence, two dictators, one Jewish and one Gentile, are the devil’s two witnesses or heralds of Satan’s being cast out of heaven and confined to the earth.

One more phrase: “and those who worship in it. The articular present active participle from the verb proskunew. We have learned the principle that you cannot give in worship what you do not have. This is false worship because these are Jewish unbelievers. They are going through the ritual but they do not have the reality. The definite article is used as a demonstrative and relative pronoun, “those who.” The pictorial present tense show presents to the mind a picture of events in the process of occurrence. The active voice: Jewish unbelievers and proselytes to Tribulational Judaism produce the action of the verb. The participle is circumstantial.

We have a prepositional phrase, e)n plus a)utoj, “in it.” He is to note the fact that the temple is jammed with worshippers. The Jews worshipping in the Tribulational temple are unbelievers who have failed to understand that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. They have failed to see the sign of the virgin birth.

The entire verse: “Then a surveying instrument was given to me [the apostle John]: and some one [the King of Arms] said, Go up and measure the temple of God, also the altar, and those who worship in it.”

We note from this verse the two witnesses or heralds of the second advent, and the setting is the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem during the Tribulation. Two men are one day going to walk dramatically into this temple and they will begin to teach there. The Jews will listen. There are those who will want to destroy them but will not succeed, they are under a special divine protection. Their message will be so dynamic that very soon they will be preaching by satellite to the entire world. They are the two great evangelists of the middle part of the Tribulation. They succeed the 144,000 Jewish evangelists and they will have the most dynamic message of all.

Measuring the worshippers at the end of this verse is another way of saying that thousands and thousands of Jews who are unbelievers flock to the temple, not only from Jerusalem but from all over the world. They come to enter into the ritual. They are impressed with the ritual. And the principle: Those who are impressed with ritual never have reality. Ritual without reality is religion without salvation. Ritual without reality is a system of religion used to blind the minds of those who do not believe in Jesus Christ. Only the two human heralds will have the power and the authority to relate the sacred furniture in the temple to our Lord Jesus Christ. We know that these worshippers are Jewish unbelievers because the believers of Israel living in Jerusalem at that time have already left town. They left town under the command of Matthew 24:15-20. Only the unbelievers remain, in the pattern of 2 Thessalonians 2:7-12. The two witnesses walk into Jerusalem where you have unbelievers only at that time. The second advent will expose the false worship in the temple. In the meantime the two heralds have that job, they will use it as the basis for preaching the gospel, especially everything relating to the first advent. Those who become believers under the ministry of these two witnesses, Moses and Elijah, will form a citizen army to resist the king of the north at the siege of Jerusalem, according to Zechariah 14 and other passages.

There are two kind of Jews, then, in Jerusalem during the Tribulation. There are the Jews who believe in the first half whose order was to leave when they saw the abomination go up in the temple. And so all the Jews who were saved in the first half of the Tribulation, generally under the ministry of the 144,000 Jewish evangelists, will leave town. When the two witnesses come all of the believers have left town, according to Matthew 24. Then there is the second group who will accept Christ as saviour. They will listen to the message of Moses and Elijah; they will also hear the message of certain angels who will evangelise at that time; they will stay in Jerusalem and they will fight. They will be the heroes in the last battle of the Armageddon campaign. Each group in their own way are the heroes of the Tribulation.

There is one part of the temple that John is not to measure, given in verse two. The exception is based on the fact that the ministry of the two witnesses or human heralds of the second advent is a Jewish matter, it is not an issue as far as Gentiles are concerned. The problem with the Gentiles is international religion which we will study in Revelation chapters 17 and 18.

We begin with the phrase, “And,” and then the command: the aorist active imperative of the verb e)kballw, and it means to expel or throw out or exclude. We will translate it, “And exclude the outer court.” The outer court of the temple was surrounded by high walls with several gates. There were porches running around the outer court with roofs of cedar supported by marble pillars. This will be duplicated in the Tribulation. Gentiles were permitted into the outer court, it was called the court of the Gentiles.

“and do not measure it.” This time we have the aorist active subjunctive of the verb metrew, but with the negative mh we have the subjunctive mood giving the order instead of the imperative. So we have a constative aorist, active voice: John is prohibited from producing the action. This is the prohibitive subjunctive which carries the power of the negative command.

Since the outer court is the court of the Gentiles it is not the setting of the ministry of the two witnesses, Moses and Elijah, who have special heraldry ministries to Israel. The reason for this: a causal conjunction, o(ti. Now he is given a reason, the aorist passive indicative of didomi, “because it is given.” This is the culminative aorist tense viewing the action of the verb in its entirety but regarding it from the viewpoint of existing results. Because the Tribulation is a time when the Gentiles still control. There never will be a time when Gentiles do not have influence in the middle east until the second advent of Christ, “because it has been given to the Gentiles.” “The Gentiles” is the dative of indirect object from e)qnoj, sometimes it means nations and sometimes Gentiles, “and they [the Gentiles] will,” future active indicative of the verb patew, “trample,” “for forty-two months,” the last three and a half years of the Tribulation. The revived Roman empire will take over and take charge.

The ministry of the two heralds of the second advent, Moses and Elijah, will run coterminously with the Gentile control of the city of Jerusalem during the last half of the Tribulation. The question arises as to how the Gentiles gain control of Jerusalem for the last three and a half years of the Tribulation. The answer is found in Revelation chapter thirteen, second Thessalonians chapter two (verses 7-12), Daniel 9:27; 11:31: 12:11; Matthew 25:15, and other passages.

For the first three and a half years of the Tribulation Israel and the holy city enjoy a period of autonomy and prosperity. But the rise of power spheres changes all of that. There will be during this first half of the Tribulation power politics. There will be the king of the west, the revived Roman empire which does not include the USA. There will be a king of the north which today would be comparable to the Russian communist bloc, but if the Rapture doesn’t occur for, say, 500 years that could be someone else from the same area. Then there is the king of the south, the pan-Arabic bloc. There are the kings of the east which today would be comparable to the Chinese communist bloc. All of these are going to put the squeeze on the middle east, and because of the proximity of the Arab nations of the king of the south and the problem there the dictator in Palestine looks for help from the king of the west, the centre of ecumenical religion in the Tribulation. The dictator does a deal with the king of the west and he does it through religion. And so since they are going to accept the ecumenical religion with Rome as the headquarters they are compelled to put a statue up in the temple to show their sincerity in the deal which is a mutual protection pact.

Simultaneously something else will be going on in heaven. There will be a war in heaven in which Michael and the army that passed in review to the shepherds at the first advent will defeat the army of Satan, and Satan and all fallen angels will be cast down to the earth. As a result of these two events the middle of the Tribulation becomes a hot-spot situation, and in that hot-spot situation God sends Moses and Elijah, the two heralds, to preach.

So the alliance between Israel and the king of the west has an ecumenical taste to it. The statue of the dictator of the revived Roman empire becomes a warning to all Jews who are believers in Christ during this first half of the Tribulation through the tremendous evangelism which has occurred.

In Matthew 24, beginning at verse 15 we begin to see the picture as to what is going on. What is the problem here? Why are there no believers when the two witnesses come to Jerusalem in the middle of the Tribulation?

This is addressed to Jewish believers in the first half of the Tribulation. “Therefore when you see the Abomination Of Desolation [the statue put up in the Tribulational temple] which message was communicated to you through the prophet Daniel [9:27; 11:31; 12:11], standing in the holy place (let the believer discern),” this is recall, third stage of the faith-rest drill, “then let those of you who are in Judea flee to the mountains [the high desert country of Edom, Moab, and Ammon]; let him who is on the roof of his house not go down and take anything out of his house; and let him who is in the field not turn back for his coat. But woe to those who are pregnant and who are nursing mothers in those days! But pray that your flight will not take place in inclement weather, or on the Sabbath; for then will be great tribulation, unequalled from the beginning of the world until now, and never will be equalled again. If those days had not been cut short no one would survive; but for the sake of the elect [you, Tribulational believers, elected to privilege] those days will be shortened.”

That is the situation and why there are no believing Jews in Jerusalem when Moses and Elijah walk in. They walk in to face a hostile audience and the hostility is increased by the fact that Satan is no longer able to get into heaven. The Gentiles will begin to control Jerusalem at this time, the Jewish believers will have fled, as per the mandate of Matthew chapter twenty-four. Jerusalem will be filled with unbelieving Jews who worship in the temple contradiction, the contradiction between the statue put up by the dictator of the revived Roman empire and the furniture that speaks of our Lord Jesus Christ. The statue of the dictator and demonism will now be involved in the temple: that which speaks of Christ and that which is Satanic, the very centre of the angelic conflict in the Tribulation will focus right there. Worship in the Jewish temple will be all ritual, no reality, until the two witnesses make their appearance and challenge this farce. This is the challenge of their ministry.

There have been as a result of man’s volition some very unusual and drastic periods of history, periods of terrible disaster when it appeared as though everything was going to come to an end. But the world has not come to an end and will not come to an end, except under the plan of God and under the right circumstances, and before the world can come to an end there is going to be one thousand years of great prosperity which we call the Millennial reign of Jesus Christ. Just before that great period of prosperity we do have one of the most unusual, if not the rarest type of period of history, the eschatology of Satan’s desperation, a period of time which begins in the middle of the Tribulation with a battle in heaven. The battle in heaven results in Satan being confined to the earth and thrown out of heaven for the first time. Even in his first fall Satan was not thrown out of heaven. And so he is cast down to the earth in the middle of the Tribulation and that begins the time of Satan’s desperation. It continues until the second advent of Christ, and therefore it is a period of roughly three and a half years of history. It is actually the story of the last half of the book of Revelation. It begins, for example, in Revelation chapter twelve with the great holocaust, the greatest attack of anti-Semitism in all of human history, carried on by Satan and his third demon assault army. In chapter thirteen are his two witnesses, his two dictators, one Jewish and one Gentile. In chapter fourteen we see a great principle. We discover that even though this is the worst period of all history it is still a period of great evangelism. But even the evangelism of that period is most unusual, it is in the extra and unusual phenomenon type of period. In chapters fifteen and sixteen we see that it is also a period of divine judgment: the seven last plagues administered by pur sui vant angels. Those seven last plagues are also called the seven goblets, mistranslated in the King James version “vials.” In chapters seventeen and eighteen we see the greatest attack of Satan on the human race in ecumenical religion. The ecumenical religion of the world in the last half of the Tribulation is the most devastating period of religion in all of history. In chapter nineteen we see the eschatology of Satan’s desperation coming to a close with the second advent which destroys Satan’s great empire on earth. In chapter twenty, verses one through three, we see the incarceration of Satan where he is put into the abyss for a thousand years and terminates the eschatology of Satan’s desperation. So all of the way from chapter twelve to chapter twenty, verse three, we have this great period of eschatology. We are getting ready for it now in chapter eleven by showing some of the most unusual events which occur at that time. It is an unusual period of history and therefore calls for some unusual evangelism under the principle that grace always precedes judgment. There is no preparation for this most devastating period of history apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ, apart from the possession of eternal life. The principle of facing death in that particular period of history worse than in any other three and a half years in all of historical events. For example, the person who faces death without eternal life is not prepared for death.

Eternal life comes in three categories. It comes in the first category, a human body at the point of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The moment we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ we receive not only the imputation of divine righteousness but we receive that life which is necessary to be a part of the plan of God. At the moment of human birth human life was imputed to each one of us but it was imputed to the human soul. Having human life in the soul is no guarantee of salvation, it merely gives the opportunity for it by personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Simultaneously Adam’s original sin was imputed to the genetically-formed old sin nature giving us spiritual death. We were born physically alive but we were born under condemnation. Our personal sins are not the basis of our condemnation but the imputation of Adam’s sin to each one of us at birth is. Personal sins became the basis of our Lord’s condemnation on the cross, His saving work where all of the sins in the history of the human race were imputed to Christ and judged on the cross. And so when a person believes in Christ he receives in this dispensation 36 things, but two things are also true for every dispensation: the imputation of divine righteousness and the imputation of eternal life.

Eternal life occupies three different bodies. We start out with eternal life in the human body and when we die physically that eternal life goes with the soul out of the body into the presence of the Lord. In the presence of the Lord we receive an interim body and that interim body also has eternal life present in it, along with human life. When the resurrection or the Rapture of the Church occurs we receive a resurrection body, and that resurrection body also has eternal life. So eternal life begins the moment we believe in Jesus Christ. We are in a physical body. If we die before the resurrection occurs then we are absent from the body and face to face with the Lord and we are in an interim body where there is great happiness and blessing in heaven. Then at the point of the resurrection or the Rapture of the Church we receive a resurrection body so that eternal life resides first of all in a human body, then in an interim body, and eventually in a resurrection body.

This is very important when we face the fact that apart from the resurrection of the Church all of us are going to die physically. This mortality is not going to take on immortality except for one generation. The Church Age, the dispensation of the royal family of God, terminates with the resurrection. Those who happen to be alive at that moment are caught up without going through physical death. They miss, therefore, the interim body in heaven and the great happiness that is related to it, but they have, of course, the resurrection body forever and ever at that point. Death has lost its sting therefore for all believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and as we face disaster this becomes a very important doctrine: to recognise that no matter how bad things become on this earth we still have a great life forever and ever with God. We are free from divine condemnation, we are not going to be thrown into the lake of fire, and no historical disaster is greater than the plan that God has for us. The only problem is, are we in the plan of God in time? That means being in the divine dynasphere.

There is a time coming after the Rapture of the Church when we are going to see death as a great and real factor, and the world will seem to be falling apart for that is the period called the Tribulation. And it is in the middle of the Tribulation that we see this tremendous thing happening: Satan cast out of heaven for the first time. Satan has access to heaven and always has had access to heaven.

One of the things that is going to happen in the middle of the Tribulation is the fact that two people are brought back to life. In all of the history of the human race very few people have been resuscitated under the plan of God. Lazarus was resuscitated, he was not resurrected. Resurrection means receiving a body of incorruption, a body which will house our eternal life for all eternity; resuscitation means coming back in a physical body and subsequently dying. Lazarus came back in his physical body and eventually died. The purpose of the resuscitation of Lazarus was an evangelistic appeal to the Jews of our Lord’s day, and while many of the Jews believed many thousands of Jews saw the miracle of the resuscitation of Lazarus and rejected the Lord Jesus Christ as the Messiah. Because of their rejection of Messiah they miss the whole point of that great miracle of resuscitation.

But there is a resuscitation which has a different connotation in the middle of the Tribulation. Two men are brought back to life. Both of them had a very mysterious death. God told Moses to go up to the top of a mountain, disappear and die. That is exactly what he did. In Jude we discover that there was a great fight over the body of Moses after his soul and spirit departed to be with the Lord. This great fight was between two of the highest military leaders of all creatures: Michael, who in the elect order of battle of angels is the senior commander of the armies of heaven, and he fought with Satan. Satan, of course, is the highest ranking and most powerful of creatures to ever exist, he was created a cherub. There was a reason for this fight. Both understood the theology involved. The theology involved begins in Revelation chapter eleven, verse three, where Moses is resuscitated, brought back from his interim body in heaven for a special mission.

Elijah also had a very strange death. He was seen to get into a chariot and he disappeared from the earth. They both went to heaven, they were transferred and given their interim bodies where they have had many hundreds of years of great happiness and blessing, but both of them are coming back for a special mission. These two would not come back for a special mission were it not for the fact that the greatest period of anti-Semitism and the greatest holocaust of all time is about to occur, so that their ministry gives every Jew the opportunity of being prepared and even being protected from that great holocaust.

Before we begin verse three we have to identify the two witnesses. Verse three simply says, “And I will give to my two witnesses,” the human heralds of the second advent. But we must identify these witnesses if it is possible. There was one other person in the Old Testament who had a strange death, his name was Enoch. Enoch is often identified as one of the two witnesses because he departed from the earth without dying. However, it should be remembered that the Tribulation is the last seven years of the Tribulation of Israel, the seventieth week of Daniel, and the two witnesses have to be Jews under that concept. Enoch was a Gentile and as a Gentile he was not qualified. These two witnesses are Jews coming back to Israel. Both of them have to be great public speakers because they are going to evangelise in Israel. So it should be remembered that as the Tribulation is the last seven years of the dispensation of Israel it is the Jews that are in focus here. The Jews are responsible for the dissemination of the gospel in the Jewish Age and they are responsible for the dissemination of the gospel in the Tribulation at the end of the Jewish Age. That is why we have 144,000 Jews being used as evangelists in the Tribulation. Both witnesses are human heralds of the King, the King is a Jew, the heralds of the King must be Jews following the pattern of the first advent where John the Baptist was a Jew as the herald of the first advent.

Now that we have eliminated Enoch the question is, who are the two witnesses? Actually, Jesus Himself reveals the two witnesses of the second advent on the mount of transfiguration. In Matthew chapter 17, verses 2 and 3, our Lord makes it very clear who the two witnesses are. The background to this passage is the fact that before some of the disciples died they were going to see our Lord as He would appear at the second advent. Peter, James and John are the three who had that opportunity. A part of the transfiguration scene is Matthew 17:3, “And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them.” Moses and Elijah are identified as the human heralds of the second advent.

Of course there is a problem with John the Baptist and Elijah. That problem is one that is covered in Malachi 4:5, “Behold, I am going to send to you [the Jews in the Tribulation] Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day [the last three and a half years of the Tribulation] of the Lord.” Notice that Elijah is coming before the great and terrible day of the Lord which is the last half of the Tribulation. John, as the herald of the first advent of Christ, has the same Holy Spirit and power as Elijah will have as the herald of the second advent but John is not coming just before the second advent as a herald.

In Luke 1:17, “And it is he [John the Baptist] who will go as a herald before him,” that is, a herald before Christ at the first advent in the spirit and in the power of Elijah. John the Baptist would be a herald for the first advent and he will have the same Spirit and the same power as Elijah in the second advent. What this is saying in effect is that there is a modified divine dynasphere used by John the Baptist which will also be used by Elijah as well as the two heralds of the second advent. The priests and the Levites, of course, approached John and quizzed him regarding his identity. He made it very clear that he was not the Christ and he also made it clear that he was not Elijah returned from the dead. So it was understood by John and by the priests and by the Levites that Elijah was coming back from the dead at some time, John 1:19-21.

The priests and the Levites were religious. Religion is a form of arrogance. The difference between Christianity and religion is very simple. Religion accepts the ritual; Christianity accepts the person. Christianity is not a religion, it is a relationship with God. The greatest attack Satan ever made on our Lord Jesus Christ was religion. The Jews took their ritual and ran with it in unbelief. That’s religion; it is ritual without reality. They are not the only ones who have a religion. Any group of people anywhere in the world who reject Christ as saviour accept the substitute which is religion. They accept the sugar-coated pill that will take them all the way to hell — religion. There are many organisations which call themselves Christian but they are not, they are religion. We will see this in great detail when we get to Revelation chapters seventeen and eighteen for the last great struggle of Satan in the eschatology of Satan’s desperation is his religious attack on the human race. The greatest function of religion in the history of the world will occur at the end of the Tribulation. But religion is always the devil’s ace trump. Satan uses religion to blind the minds of them that believe not lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ who is the image of God should shine unto them. So we must learn to distinguish between religion and salvation. The two have nothing in common. Religion is related to the cosmic system and, of course, our relationship with God is related to the divine dynasphere.

Ritual without reality is meaningless and Israel has never discovered that. And that is why, “Are you Elijah?” and John said, “I am not.” The Jews could not distinguish between our Lord’s Alpha and Omega glory, and its consequences. If Jesus, however, had been accepted as Messiah at the first advent then Elijah would have been the herald of the first advent. That is what we have in Matthew 11:9,10 — “But why do you go out? To see a prophet? Yes, I tell you, and one who is more than a prophet [John the Baptist]. This is the one about whom it has been written [Malachi 3:1], ‘Behold, I send my herald before your face, who will prepare your way before you’.”

That is John the Baptist, the herald of the first advent. He is sent first to prepare the way for our Lord. Then Jesus explains that it is the Jews who if they had accepted Him during the first advent then John would have been Elijah.

“Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist … and from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men seize it for themselves. For all the prophets and the Torah [the Old Testament] prophesied until John. And if you wish to receive it, he is Elijah, who is to come.” But they didn’t do that and so John is the herald, Elijah is one of the two witnesses in Revelation 11:3.

The “iffy” approach, then, says in effect that if Jesus Christ had been received by Israel as their Messiah and King, then Elijah would have been the herald of the first advent. But the omniscience of God knew that Christ would be rejected by Israel at the first advent. Therefore it was necessary to have heralds for two advents. John the Baptist is the human herald of the first advent; Elijah is one of the two human heralds of the second advent. Jesus Christ clarified this point while coming down from the mount of transfiguration — Matthew 17:10-13:

“Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” And he [Jesus] answered and said, ‘Elijah is coming and will re-establish all things; but I say to you, that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognise him [John the Baptist], but they have done to him everything they wished. So also the Son of Man is about to suffer by them’. Then the disciples understood that he had spoken to them about John the Baptist.” They were now getting it straight: John the Baptist was the herald of the first advent; Elijah the herald of the second advent.

The conclusion of the whole thing is found in Matthew 17:3 where we read of the two witnesses of the second advent: “And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them.” That is the decision factor right there.

In Revelation 11:3 we begin with the future active indicative of the verb didomi. The future tense is a predictive future and it anticipates an event expected to occur in future time, the last half of the Tribulation. The active voice: God the Father produces the action of the verb. The indicative mood is declarative representing the verbal idea from the viewpoint of reality. In other words, all during the worst period of disaster in human history, all during the time of the eschatology of Satan’s desperation, we have two men who will have a magnificent ministry and will once more declare the difference between the first and the second advent, and will explain Deuteronomy 6:4: that Jesus Christ had to come the first time to guarantee promises to Israel, promises of salvation, promises of the future of Israel, promises of the function of client nation Israel in the Millennium. All of these things to be fulfilled demanded salvation. He came the first time to die; He comes the second time to rule. The two heralds will explain all of these things.

We actually have in the Greek here an ellipsis which demands the accusative singular direct object from dunamij, the word for power. He is going to give them dunamij, and that is a very significant gift, “And I will give to my two witnesses power.” This is a modified divine dynasphere.

Believers after the resurrection of the Church do not receive the divine dynasphere. The divine dynasphere is a present first given at the virgin birth of Christ. At the first advent of Christ our Lord, while He was born and slept in a feeding trough, was also given the divine dynasphere and the humanity of Christ lived in that divine dynasphere all the way to the cross where He was judged for our sins. When Christ was ascended, seated at the right hand of the Father and given His third royal patent, He was minus a royal family. Therefore the Age of Israel was stopped, Church Age was inserted in order that we might have a royal family. You and I as believers in the Church Age are royal family of God. Once the royal family is completed it is resurrected — the Rapture of the Church. Then we go back to Israel, the Tribulation. Of course, with the resurrection of the Church the operational divine dynasphere goes too. But there is for just a couple of people a modified divine dynasphere in the Tribulation and it is given to Moses and Elijah as the heralds of the second advent. The divine dynasphere was given to the royal family only, but that is the operational. There are three divine dynaspheres: the prototype, which was the one used by our Lord’s humanity resulting in His impeccability; the operational divine dynasphere which is God’s plan for the believer in this dispensation, residence, function, momentum in the divine dynasphere; then there is a modified divine dynasphere for several people like Moses and Elijah as the heralds of the second advent. That is mentioned right here in verse three.

He also says, “I will give it to my two witnesses.” We have the generic use of the definite article toij which is in the dative plural, dative of indirect object. Then we have the word duw, “two.” And with that in the dative plural indirect object we also have the word martuj, “my two witnesses [or heralds].” Martuj is used for a witness that bears the divine message, therefore a herald. And we have the possessive genitive from the pronoun e)gw, “mine, they belong to me.” They are the heralds of Christ at the second advent. The dative indirect object indicates the ones in whose interest the modified divine dynasphere is given. With the modified divine dynasphere the two human heralds of the second advent possess both the power and the authority for their ministry, for they minister in the most difficult period of human history, the time of the eschatology of Satan’s desperation. They live in a time when miracles and extra natural phenomena in all categories will exist: miracles from Satan, miracles from the power of demonism and, of course, miracles from God, both supernatural and extra natural categories of miracles. And miracles are always a distraction to the perception of Bible doctrine. It is a sort of a short-cut system. In other words, why have deliverance through the use of Bible doctrine and the second stage of the faith-rest drill when you can stand around and just say, “Lord deliver me,” and He performs a miracle? People who are the recipients of miracles rarely ever advance in the spiritual life. They want God to do something special for them, they are arrogant. They do not want to learn day by day by day, Bible doctrine and apply it to experience.

Moses and Elijah had a crisis personality and during their first tour of duty on earth both were the key men in historical situations, especially adversity. They were designed for crisis, they provided leadership for historical crises. Moses was a crisis personality for both Egypt as well as for the beginning of client nation Israel. Elijah was a crisis leader during the apostasy of the northern kingdom. The two greatest crisis personalities return to serve the Lord at this stage of the Tribulation, the time we are calling the eschatology of Satan’s desperation. The two men that we are studying can be classified as men of crisis personality. No man in history was ever loved or hated more than Moses or than Elijah. They qualified eminently for the title “crisis personality.” Not only were Jews jealous of Moses but he received great jealousy in the court of Egypt, for it was Moses the adopted son of the Queen who actually took charge of the Egyptian empire. When three great Egyptian armies had been defeated by the invading Ethiopians it was the military genius of Moses that actually took a crack army and went out and defeated the Ethiopians and saved Egypt. Moses was a crisis personality and he demonstrated it throughout his 120 years of life on this earth. Elijah is also a crisis personality and he also departed from this life in a strange way.

We continue now with the extend of the ministry of Moses and Elijah. Their ministry will be run, of course, coterminously with the eschatology of Satan’s desperation. We begin with the future active indicative of the verb profhteuw, “and they will prophesy.” The word prophesy means two things. It means first of all to foretell the future, and also means to teach Bible doctrine. Both were true of Moses and Elijah during their first tour of duty on earth and both will be true of their second tour of duty on earth, for they will be teaching Bible doctrine in the most difficult period of all human history and against the greatest possible opposition.

Sometimes people like to reduce the meaning a little bit by saying that the word prophesying means forth telling as well as foretelling. Foretelling is what Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, all of these men who had the gift of prophecy in the past, did. They foretold the future. But for all of the prophecies we find in the great books of the Old Testament which are listed as prophecy we also discover that they preached a tremendous number of sermons.

So we have the connotation here in verse three of teaching Bible doctrine and evangelising on the part of both men. The two heralds of the second advent, Moses and Elijah, will teach Bible doctrine related to the duplicate sacred articles of furniture found in the temple. We noted this briefly in verse one.

Furthermore we have an accusative plural of direct object, h(mera, and the word h(mera means days. And with it we have the exact number of days. In the Greek that would be one thousand two hundred and sixty days, roughly three and one half years. That three and one half years is the last half of the Tribulation. The ministry of Moses and Elijah as the heralds of the second advent, then, covers exactly the same period as the time of the eschatology of Satan’s desperation. Their resuscitation is not resurrection for the Old Testament saints will not be resurrected until the second advent. So we have the future tense of the word profhteuw, it is a predictive future anticipating a crisis ministry of two great crisis personalities. The active voice: Moses and Elijah produce the action of the verb in three ways. First, they will teach the true meaning of the sacred articles of furniture in the Tribulational temple in Jerusalem while at the same time exposing the false implications of the statue of the dictator of the revived Roman empire which will be set up in the holy of holies. Secondly, they will prophesy in the sense of teaching the eschatology of Satan’s desperation. They will teach the historical trends of the last three and a half years of the Tribulation. And we will study exactly what they are going to teach for we have the format. Beginning their ministry they will teach what is found in chapter twelve, the great holocaust of the last part of the Tribulation. In chapter thirteen they will expose the dictators found there, the dictator of the revived Roman empire, the beast out of the sea; and the dictator of Israel, the beast out of the land. In chapter fourteen they will lay the groundwork for greater evangelism from angelic creatures. They will teach in chapters fifteen and sixteen, before it occurs, the seven last plagues of history which are comparable to the vial judgements which should be translated goblet judgements. They will also warn of Satan’s last trump in history, the greatest attack he will ever make on the human race, the attack of ecumenical religion. They will also teach the doom of Satan. Satan will hear from them time after time messages on how he and the two dictators are going to be incarcerated and destroyed. They will also exegete and interpret certain passages from prophecy in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Joel, Zechariah, and of course the passages noted in the book of Revelation. The indicative mood is declarative for the great ministry of Moses and Elijah.

The situation

1. When the two witnesses, Moses and Elijah, begin their ministry in the middle of the Tribulation the believers converted in the first half of the Tribulation will have fled from Jerusalem and the country of Israel in general. We have noted this in Matthew 24:15-20. There is an order there for Jews who are believers and who were converted in the first half of the Tribulation through the ministry of the 144,000 Jewish evangelists.

2. The Gentile apostate religion of the revived Roman empire, i.e. the ecumenical religion of the world at that time, will have been generally accepted by the Jews as a part of a treaty between the dictator of western Europe and the dictator of Palestine.

3. In addition, the Jewish religion will be a system of ritual without reality.

4. The two heralds, Moses and Elijah, will both evangelise and teach Bible doctrine. They will announce the approach of the second advent and they will challenge the apostasy of ecumenical religion.

5. As a result, as we only have unbelievers when they arrive, there will be a tremendous harvest of believers. Thousands will respond to their ministry, not only in the middle east but throughout the world. And, as a result, there will be a second group of Jewish believers in Palestine and they are the ones who are going to fight in the siege of Jerusalem which is the last of the four battles of the Armageddon campaign in that three and a half years. They will be the pivot that will be delivered at the second advent, the story of Zechariah chapter fourteen, verses one through nine.

The uniform of the two witnesses is also mentioned, “clothed in sackcloth.” The perfect passive participle of periballw introduces the fact that they are going to be clothed. With this we have the accusative plural direct object from sakkoj, translated sackcloth. Sackcloth is a mesh, a coarse texture of cloth made from goat’s hair, so-called because it was often used for making sacks. It was a very finely-woven material. We assume from this that because of the very fine weaving systems that they will be dressed magnificently. This is not something sloppy. Ambassadors are always well-dressed within the framework of the country where they find themselves, and that is exactly what we have here. This sackcloth does not mean that they come in as sloppy Joes to preach. To be accepted before a crowd they don’t dress like scum. They aren’t hippies and they don’t look sloppy. Moses and Elijah are high-class people and they are not going to be rejected because they have style and class. Even the scum will notice that these people have something they do not, and they will listen not because of the way they dress but because of the power of God. By this time, in the middle of the Tribulation, the world will be crawling with scum and they will listen.

So we have sackcloth emphasising the fact that they are well dressed, well groomed, and this of course is in great contrast to many of the people to whom they speak. But the fact that they are so dressed does not detract in any way from their ministry. You do not have to “establish contact” by doing what the natives do, as it were. They stand up in the midst of all kinds of people who would ordinarily resent the fact that they are even well groomed. And why are they heard? Because of the power of God through the dynamics of their doctrinal understanding.

Note, then, that Moses and Elijah are men of great action. They are crisis personalities during their lifetime. We think of Elijah on Mount Carmel — action. We think of Moses leading the people of Israel — action. But when they come back, God’s sense of humour, and there is no action; it is all talk, talk, talk. They are going to teach, they are going to communicate. While they were in their lifetime great prophets, spiritual leaders, men of action, crisis personalities, when they come back they come back with the greatest power they have ever had, the power of the completed canon of scripture, the power of Bible doctrine. The real power of spiritual leadership is involved in the communicating the doctrine of the Word of God under the power of God the Holy Spirit — accuracy of exegesis and interpretation and categories. They will come back with the Bible in their hands, they will teach from the Bible. They will teach the Word of God accurately, magnificently. The real greatness for crisis is not what you do but what you think. That is what we are to understand in bringing these two men back. They were men of action, men of deeds; now they are men of thought, men of doctrine. What do people need in the crisis more than anything else? Action? No. Doctrine, right thinking. These men do not come back to perform miracles, they do not come back as men of action, they come back as men of wisdom, teaching Bible doctrine. Why? Because in the greatest crisis of all of human history, the last three and a half years of the Tribulation the greatest need, as in any historical crisis, is Bible doctrine in the thinking of people.

While they were on earth the first time Moses and Elijah were men of miracles and dynamic action but their contribution to their contemporaries will be an even greater contribution to those to whom they minister in the last half of the Tribulation. Nothing, then, is as important as the teaching of the Word of God. Nothing carries the dynamics to so many from so few as the Word of God properly taught. In any historical crisis the outcome is determined by believers with Bible doctrine resident in their souls — the pivot concept. In the Tribulation the same factor holds true. While thousands of believers find Christ as saviour under their ministry it is those who keep on with doctrine who are going to stand in the breech. We will study them when we get to Revelation chapter sixteen. No action in life has more merit than a clear, concise communication of Bible doctrine. And it will be said at the end of the Tribulation that never in the history of the world have so many owed so much to two men — Moses and Elijah. They will have their greatest ministry for they will have the entire canon of scripture and they will communicate in great power.

Verse 4 — the Old Testament analogy to the two witnesses. We have the nominative plural subject from the immediate demonstrative pronoun o(utoj which is translated “these.” This refers to Moses and Elijah as the two heralds of the second advent, the crisis personalities for the most crisis period of history, the period of the eschatology of Satan’s desperation. During this entire period of time after Satan is thrown out of heaven, he is confined to the earth, and he knows that his time is short.

Just as Moses and Elijah as the two witnesses are associated with the Tribulational temple in Jerusalem in this context, so we have the original two people who are mentioned by the two olive trees. They are Joshua and Zerubbabel who were associated with the reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem in the year BC 516. Now we have a Tribulational temple and in that Tribulational temple we have Moses and Elijah identified with it. This will help us to add a few concepts to the principle of the crisis personality, for Moses and Elijah in their ministry at the end of the Tribulation are compared in this passage to Joshua the high priest and Zerubbabel who led the first colony of Jews back from Babylon. These two men are compared to Moses and Elijah in the reconstruction of the temple and the ministry thereto.

We have a present active indicative of e)imi, “These are.” And with this we have the predicate nominative — three words. First of all we have the definite article, a(i, and it is the generic use of the definite article. Then the indeclinable numeral duw, and the noun e)laia, which refers to an olive tree. We have here a reference to the two olive trees, “These are the two olive trees.” We are talking about Zechariah chapter four, verse three and Zechariah chapter four, verse eleven.

The first of the two olive trees is Zerubbabel. The Jews had received the administration of the fifth cycle of discipline from the Chaldeans in BC 586 when Nebuchadnezzar took client nation Israel out for seventy years until BC 516. (There is a reason why it was to last for seventy years. It had to do with the fact that the Jews had missed seventy Sabbatical years in the first four hundred and ninety years of their history. They had never observed a Sabbatical year so the Lord gave them to Israel all at once) The year 516 BC was the year that Zerubbabel finished rebuilding the temple. He was from the tribe of Judah, the family of David, and he led the first wave of Jews back into the land in the first year of Cyrus the Great — 536 BC. So for fifty years they had remained in Babylon but Zerubbabel led them back in 536. Accompanying Zerubbabel was Joshua the high priest who was from the tribe of Levi. On the second month of the second year of their return to the land the foundations of the temple were laid. This is the famous passage in Ezra where some were crying and some were cheering. The cry-babies were those who remembered the old temple and said, “This isn’t as large”; the cheering were the younger crowd who were saying, “We are going to have a temple. Who cares whether it is smaller?”

Before the temple could be built the Samaritans infiltrated and wanted a part of the reconstruction. Zerubbabel refused. He was a real crisis personality. So they went and complained to Cyrus the Great and stopped the construction of the temple for about sixteen years. During this time the people forgot all about the temple and began to build lovely homes on the hillside for themselves. Then suddenly God raised up two prophets: Haggai and Zechariah. They said to the people, “Look at these lovely homes you live in. Take a look at the Lord’s house. Nothing has been done.” So these two men got the Jews working again on the temple and the work was resumed under the leadership of Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest. So the Jews had both a spiritual and a civil leader. They finished the temple in four years — 516 BC, which marks the end of the Babylonian captivity.

One of the big encouraging factors to get Zerubbabel and Joshua motivated was the vision of the two olive trees — Zechariah chapter four. It illustrated the leadership necessary to rebuild the temple: civil leadership and authority, and spiritual leadership. Joshua the high priest was the spiritual leader, Zerubbabel was the civil leader, and you will note that they separated “church and state”, as it were (there was no church, it was not the Church Age). They separated the civil from the spiritual. You cannot have freedom by combining the civil and the spiritual.

Zechariah 4:2, “ … ‘I see, and behold, a lampstand all of gold with its bowl [an oil reservoir] on top of it, and seven spouts belonging to each lamp which are on top of it; also two olive trees beside it [beside the lampstand], one on the right side of the bowl and the other on the left side of the bowl’.”

The point here is that we have one olive tree representing civil government and one olive tree representing the spiritual side of the client nation.

Verse 4, “Then I [Zechariah] spoke to the teaching angel and said, ‘What are these, my lord?’ Notice the respect Zechariah had for this teaching angel.

Verse 5, “Then the teaching angel answered and said,” and we will pick up what he said in verse 6, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel saying, ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord of the armies.”

Verse 7, that great question: “What are you, O great mountain?” The point is this: there is a mountain in the way. Someone is trying to stop the building of the temple, someone named Satan. Someone was trying to hinder Zerubbabel as the civil leader and Joshua as the spiritual leader. The mountain means the hindrance to the completion of the temple. And here is the problem. In Ezra 4:1-3 we have the infiltration of the Samaritans. Satan comes as an angel of light but doctrine motivated separation. In Ezra 4:4 we have distraction by other enemies. In Ezra 4:5-24 we have legal opposition. Then there are fourteen years when there is no work on the temple while the people build their own homes — Haggai 1:4. During those 14 years the people did not prosper because while they were building their own homes they did not go to Bible class, Haggai 1:5, 9-11. After the building was resumed there came opposition from Tattenai, the Persian governor, Ezra 5:3-6:13. However, the mountain of opposition is going to be removed.

Zechariah 4:7ff — “ ‘What are you, O great mountain before Zerubbabel? You will become a plain; and he [Zerubbabel] will place the headstone on the wall with shouts, “Grace, grace, grace to it!” ’

“Also the word of the Lord came to me saying, The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house [BC 536], and his hands will finish it [BC 516].

Verse 10, “For who has despised the day of small things? [All of those wimps who were complaining about it not being as big as the original].”

Verse 11, “Then I spoke and said to him, ‘What are the two olive trees on the right and the left of the lampstand?’ ”

Verse 14, “Then he replied, ‘These are the two anointed [“sons of oil” literally from the Hebrew] ones [Joshua and Zerubbabel] who are standing by the Lord of the entire earth’.”

These two men are crisis personalities, special people for difficult times. Crisis personalities are people who are there when the mountain looms up and people who have the ability to turn the mountain into a plain. Joshua and Zerubbabel were the men who stood in the gap when the second temple was being rebuilt. Moses and Elijah are resuscitated as crisis personalities for the greatest crisis of all human history, the period of the eschatology of Satan’s desperation. So we have another temple crisis in the Tribulation. It seeks analogy in the Old Testament [Zechariah chapter four], therefore the reference to the two olive trees. While the temple crisis is different in each case two men are always related to the solution, two men filled with the Spirit and full of Bible doctrine. In the building of the second temple in Zechariah chapter four the solution is related to the two olive trees — Zerubbabel and Joshua. It takes civil function and spiritual function to keep a client nation going or to get one cranked up, and the two must be separated; therefore two men, not one. In the profaning of the Tribulational temple in Revelation chapter eleven the solution is related to the two olive trees, only this time it is Moses and Elijah the two human heralds of the second advent.

Revelation 11:4, “These are the two olive trees.” Then, because the ministry of these two witnesses is different [they are the heralds of the second advent] a second analogy is necessary. The adjunctive use of the conjunction kai, translated “also,” then the predicate nominative plural from the generic use of the definite article, a(i. With it we have the predicate nominative plural luxnia which means lampstands. Lampstands give light, and the two witnesses give light from their doctrinal teaching regarding the Tribulational temple. The thing that strikes you in the Old Testament about Moses and Elijah is their action. Now they come back as men of doctrine, for the greatest crisis of history demands doctrine, and the real answer to crisis is doctrine resident in the soul. And they do not come back as men of action, they come back as men of doctrine — two great communicators of Bible doctrine. Lampstands give light; Moses and Elijah give light to their doctrinal discourses. They also give light as the human heralds of the second advent. They are two brilliant lights in the darkest age of history, the age of the eschatology of Satan’s desperation. These are the two olive trees.

“also the two lampstands,” Moses and Elijah are two lampstands. Now we do not have civil authority and spiritual authority, we have two men with spiritual authority, we have two lampstands.

Next we have the articular present active participle from the verb i(stemi, “who are standing.” The definite article is used as a relative pronoun whose antecedent is Moses and Elijah, the two witnesses, the two crisis personalities for the last part of the Tribulation. The dramatic perfect tense represents the status of Moses and Elijah, they stand through their entire ministry. Nothing shakes them, nothing deters them, they do not fall apart, they are true crisis personalities, they meet the crisis without any failures of any kind. The active voice: Moses and Elijah produce the action of the verb at the end of the Tribulation, the last one thousand two hundred and sixty days of the Tribulation. The participle is circumstantial.

Next we have an improper preposition, e)nwpion, plus the genitive of kurioj, “before the Lord.” This is a reference to Jesus Christ as the ruler of the world at the second advent. And with this is the possessive genitive of the noun gh, referring to the earth, “who are standing as heralds before the Lord of the planet earth,” Jesus Christ at the second advent.

Translation of verse 4: “These are the two olive trees, also the two lampstands [Moses and Elijah communicate doctrine, they are the light for the crisis] who are standing as heralds before the Lord of planet earth [Jesus Christ at the second advent].”

A further analogy develops. The olive tree analogy refers to the power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of Moses and Elijah in teaching doctrine. The most important function is the filling of the Holy Spirit and the teaching of doctrine. The lampstand analogy refers to their doctrinal message during the Tribulational ministry of Moses and Elijah. It is impossible for anyone who is a believer to face a crisis of any kind and be a crisis personality without Bible doctrine. The key to crisis is doctrine. These men have the key and they teach it courageously in the midst of the greatest opposition the world has ever known for Bible doctrine.

We see now in verse five the wall of fire provided for the two human heralds. These men are men with a message, they are not men of violence. The only time that they use anything that can be construed as violence is in self-defence because they must continue their mission. The reason for that is because they have a tremendous personal sense of destiny. Anyone who is going to be a crisis personality must have a personal sense of destiny. You as a believer should begin to have a personal sense of destiny because as a believer you are in the plan of God, you are royal family of God.

We have in verse 5 the first of several conditional clauses. We begin with an inferential explicative use of the conjunction kai, and we translate it “furthermore.” Then we have a conditional particle e)i. It introduces the protasis of a first class condition, a supposition from the viewpoint of reality. So whatever is coming up we are looking at it from the standpoint of reality. Next we have the enclitic indefinite pronoun tij, and it is always used to represent a category, in this case the category of the human race. In fact it is a very interesting category, those who are antagonistic to the teaching of doctrine during that period are antagonistic, therefore, to the two human heralds, Moses and Elijah. Hatred, antagonism and implacability is there; they are in the cosmic system and they don’t like Moses and Elijah. And everything is intensified in the last three and a half years of the Tribulation so that when people generally do not like someone else they generally try to remove them from life. These are Tribulational believers and unbelievers residing in the cosmic system.

Then we have the present active indicative of the verb qelw which means to wish to desire, it expresses volition. Generally it expresses volition related to emotion. “Furthermore if anyone [the demonised population of the last half of the Tribulation] desires [resolves, is motivated].” The present tense is a progressive present, it signifies action in a state of persistence, present linear aktionsart. The active voice: the believer and unbeliever involved in the cosmic system, demonised, produce the action. The indicative mood is declarative used to indicate the first class condition, the reality of the fact that Moses and Elijah, two of the greatest speakers who ever lived, are not liked by everyone.

Any time you have a crisis personality you are going to have great dislike or great admiration. There is no middle ground with a crisis personality. Crisis personalities are going to be disliked and when someone dislikes you they are going to do something about it. This is exactly what Moses and Elijah face constantly. They can’t walk around with a wall of fire and they do not have the wall of fire in the ordinary sense. They open their mouth and preach and people are saved and people are blessed. Other people are antagonised. Doctrine always antagonises as well as blesses, it depends upon the individual attitude. And when you find a situation where Bible doctrine does not antagonise you are probably looking at a place where there is not very much freedom. Doctrine antagonises and doctrine blesses, and that is a manifestation of freedom. Here there are those who do not want to hear Moses and Elijah, or in hearing them, dislike them. They desire to do something to them. We have the aorist active infinitive of the verb a)dikew which goes with qelw. It means to injure, to damage, to hurt, and probably to harm covers everything. The active voice of qelw, believers and unbelievers involved in the cosmic system, produce the action. The indicative mood indicates simply the first class condition. But when we go to the aorist active infinitive we now have a change from the present tense to the aorist tense. The aorist tense is a constative aorist for a fact or action extended over one thousand two hundred and sixty days, the period of the ministry of Moses and Elijah as the human heralds of the second advent. The active voice: both believers and unbelievers involved in the cosmic system have the freedom to express antagonism in terms of harm. The infinitive is the infinitive of purpose expressing the aim of the direction denoted by the finite verb, the finite verb being the verb qelw.

What does all this add up to? It all adds up to a principle, but first we need to get the translation. We have an accusative plural direct object from a)utoj, an intensive pronoun never used as an intensive pronoun, or rarely does. In the Koine Greek they forgot to bring all of the personal pronouns over from the Attic Greek, and they forgot to bring the third person personal pronoun o(u or its plural sfeij. Since they didn’t bring them over they had to find a substitute and that is why a)utoj is used hundreds of times as a personal pronoun, third person, and rarely ever used as an intensive pronoun. Here it is the direct object and it refers to Moses and Elijah once again. So what we have so far is: “Furthermore if anyone [demonised population, believer and unbeliever in the cosmic system] desires to harm them [Moses and Elijah].”

Then we have the apodosis. The protasis of the first class condition verifies the fact that they are going to have opposition. In the apodosis the first word is the word for fire in the Greek, pur. Next we have a verb, the present active indicative of e)kporeuomai and it really should be translated, “fire shoots out of their mouths.” The e)kporeuomai is a pictorial present tense, it brings to the mind a picture of this event in the process of occurrence. These two great men on their second tour of duty in history are permitted a weapon. They are permitted to kill with a very important weapon. Reason: they are so wise, the great pressure does not bring out any antagonism in them, they can use this weapon strictly for defence. They never abuse the wall of fire given to them. They are so wise, so objective, so filled with personal responsibility and integrity that the weapon is safe in their hands. Therefore they are permitted this weapon of protection for remember that the last three and a half years of the Tribulation is the greatest period of violence in all of human history. While the active voice emphasises the action of the verb the middle voice emphasises the agent producing the action. The indirect middle emphasises the agent as producing the action rather than participating in its results. The indicative mood is declarative for the future reality of this weapons system in the hands of these two men. Principle: Always in this world there are those who can be trusted with weapons. They have a great sense of responsibility, they have virtue, integrity and honour, and they never use the weapon to gain power or authority for themselves but strictly as a matter of defence. That is exactly the principle here.

So fire shoots from their mouth. We have e)k plus the ablative of stoma for the mouth. The question always: Is it literally from their mouth or not? In this case it doesn’t make any difference, it is still a weapon, it is still effective. The Bible doesn’t satisfy our curiosity. What the Bible does tell us is that it is effective and the principle behind it: those who have integrity have the right to weapons. Moses and Elijah have a special weapon. They are either evangelising and teaching believers on the one hand or they are antagonising the whole cosmic system — believers and unbelievers in the cosmic system, all the fallen angels who have been thrown out of heaven. They are antagonising everyone and if you antagonise that many people one of them is going to get the idea that you should be eliminated. So before they left heaven they were given this special weapon. Note that God gives them the weapon. The police system in Jerusalem in the Tribulation is not going to protect them, no one is going to protect them, they are on their own and they are going to survive magnificently until it is the Lord’s time to take them. No system of evil, no power in the world, no system of weaponry no matter how sophisticated, can take a person out of this world until God says it is time to come home.

The next phrase is, “and it destroys.” The connective conjunction kai followed by the present active indicative of katesqiw means to eat, to masticate, to chew up, swallow and completely digest. What it comes to mean is to destroy, to consume in the sense of destroy, “and it destroys” is the correct translation. The static present tense is for a condition taken for granted as a fact. When God gave them a weapon the weapon was designed to destroy. That is what weapons are for! God didn’t give them this fire to impress everyone. Notice that God will abolish warfare in the Millennium but until then weapons are legitimate. The active voice: fire from the mouth of Moses and Elijah produces the action of the verb. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of this defence weapons system which acts as a wall of fire protecting these two men while they carry on their ministry.

When we react is when we are at our most dangerous self. In this period of the Tribulation a lot of people are going to react to Moses and Elijah and they are going to react with violence. So what is the correct thing to do when people are out to destroy you? Exactly what the Bible says here: “and it destroys their enemies,” the accusative plural direct object from e)kqroj which means enemies. Note that this weapons system is defensive. A defensive weapon is designed to match wisdom and integrity. Until the Lord calls you home you have a right to stay alive and a defensive weapon is to be used simply to defend your right to stay alive.

A weapons system is a defensive system, it is not to be used to achieve power. It is used to protect your right to live in this earth as an individual. You have a right to live until the Lord calls you home. You have a right to live to fulfil God’s plan for your life. You have a right not only to live but you have a right to property. Your life and your property are both sacred. Property is anything you own. As an offensive weapon system it would be a system of tyranny; as a defensive weapon it is a system of freedom. That is why God gave the two heralds this weapon.

The two heralds were permitted to use weapons in defence of their lives. God had a purpose for their lives and that purpose did not agree, of course, with Satan who in the time of his desperation will seek to destroy every effective communication of Bible doctrine. And so demonised people will seek to annihilate, to destroy, to assassinate Moses and Elijah during their second tour of duty to this earth. They are given one weapon by which they can kill those who try to kill them.

There are two principles here: It is important that their message be disseminated; Every human being has a right to live until he has forfeited that life to crime or until it is God’s time to take him home. Life is sacred under the laws of divine establishment. Life and property are both sacred and are not to be tampered with. In the protection of them the use of violence is legitimate.

This weapons system which will be used to protect and preserve the lives of the two heralds from destruction so that the plan of God can be fulfilled in the communication of doctrine. As a defensive weapon used against their enemies it is a killer in the most honourable and righteous sense. Arrogance on the part of these two men could result in them turning the weapons system into an offensive weapon for their personal advantage, a seizure of power, but they didn’t do it. All weapons must be compatible with the Word of God in a given situation. In the military to kill with weapons is an honourable thing but the use of weapons in society to eliminate someone you hate is an evil thing. In this situation God is not using Moses and Elijah as commandos from heaven to kill the enemies of the cross, He is using them to communicate Bible doctrine to people who can therefore use their volition to accept it or reject it.

So out of this first half of verse five comes a principle:

Weapon compatibility with a mission

1. In time a weapon exists, whether it is a conventional weapon or a sophisticated weapon — a missile, a nuclear bomb, a machine gun, or what ever it is — the weapon must be compatible with the mission and objective.

2. As such this weapon, the flame thrower in the context, was designed to keep them alive, not to kill those who live in the cosmic system. Why didn’t God protect them? you say. God never stops the function of the angelic conflict which is volition. In the volition of certain demonised people they want to kill Moses and Elijah, but God does not stop the function of their volition. If God coerces evil volition God can coerce good volition; but God doesn’t coerce any volition, that is the name of the game in the angelic conflict. Therefore recognising that people are going to try to kill them God provides them with something where their volition is involved. When you use a weapon in defence of your life your volition is involved. God does not destroy positive or negative volition, good or bad volition, they both function. Moses and Elijah have a weapon, therefore they have volition with the use of that weapon, just as those who hate them and despise them and want to kill them have volition and weapons and try to kill them. So the whole of the time of Satan’s desperation, the last half of the Tribulation, is still volition. God has never tampered with volition.

No one can function in life and utilise divine power delegated to him unless he understands his mission.

3. There is no abuse in the use of this weapon on the part of Moses and Elijah. They didn’t use it for their personal glory or to gain control of the world. Why didn’t they? Because they understood their mission.

4. Moses and Elijah were selected for this mission because they would not abuse this sophisticated weapon for their own benefit but they would use it for the glory of God in the sense that they were glorifying God by teaching doctrine, and to continue to teach doctrine they had to use it in defence of their lives.

5. The purpose of a defensive weapon is to keep a person alive for the fulfilment of his mission.

6. Therefore they are to give people Bible doctrine and only to kill those who would seek to kill them and who would seek to hinder them from teaching doctrine. In other words, those who would try to stop their mission by killing them. Life is sacred and no one has a right to take their lives.

7. When you have power in your hands you must be alert to use that power in the context of your mission, not as a means of gaining power for self.

8. The most difficult weapons to use in the Christian life are those weapons designed for defensive action only. Therefore the principle: No one can function in life and utilise divine power delegated to him unless he understands his mission in life, the meaning of his life in relationship to logistical grace. And the application to us: to understand our mission in life. We are members of the royal family of God, we are given offensive weapons like impersonal love toward man. Our defensive weapon is residence and function in the divine dynasphere, the wall of fire. Our offensive system is perception and application of Bible doctrine.

Verse 5, “For if anyone desires to harm them,” the two heralds, Moses and Elijah, “fire shoots out of their mouth, and destroys their enemies.” Their enemies are both born-again believers and unbelievers in the cosmic system. They are first of all enemies of the cross, demonised, and they become the enemies of Moses and Elijah.

There is a second conditional clause. We begin with the inferential expletive kai, and with it a conditional conjunction e)i. It introduces ordinarily a second class condition, but here we find e)i plus the subjunctive and it is therefore a third class condition. That means a more probable future condition, it introduce the protasis of a third class condition. The enclitic indefinite pronoun tij follows, used for a category. It represents a category of the human race, those people in the Tribulation living in the cosmic system involved in degrees of demonism. If they are believers they can only be under demon influence which motivates them to evil and terrorism; or they can be, as unbelievers, both under demon influence and demon possessed, which influences them to do exactly the same thing. The result is the same. Technically there is a difference as to what can happen to a believer in the cosmic system.

Then we have the aorist active subjunctive of the verb qelw. This is a potential situation which will finish up the concept of this verse. Qelw means to wish or to desire and sometimes even implies the relationship between motivation and action, “also if anyone would desire.” The constative aorist tense contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety and places emphasis on motivation and the function of free will of those believers and unbelievers in the Tribulation, living in the cosmic system. The active voice: the Tribulational believers and unbelievers living in the cosmic system and are involved in their demonisation process produce the action of the verb, and people undergo personality change.

Weak people undergo personality change because of bad environment but environment is no excuse for personality change, personality degeneration. Strong people undergo personality change through perception of principle: unbelievers, principle; believers, Bible doctrine. No two people are ever the same in life. As long as you are exposed to varying circumstances of life you will undergo personality change. And, of course, it can be for the better or for the worse. It is generally for the worse unless you have the ability and the power to think, the ability and the power to perceive in terms of principle — doctrine, truth. If your life is not regulated by some system of principle of truth and doctrine then your changes are always for the worse.

The subjunctive mood is a potential subjunctive qualified by the element of contingency. Life in the cosmic system is the contingency and it motivates antagonism toward those who teach truth. Believers and unbelievers alike in the cosmic truth are antagonistic toward any communication of the truth.

“also if anyone,’ demonised population residing in the cosmic system, “would desire.” Then we have the aorist active infinitive of the verb a)dikew which means to harm or to do some form of evil. In this case it has to do with assassination, terrorism. The constative aorist tense is for a fact or action extended over the period of the ministry of Moses and Elijah in the time of the eschatology of Satan’s desperation, the last half of the Tribulation. The active voice: the believer and unbeliever living in that period of time produce the action of the verb, and this is an infinitive of purpose expressing the aim of the action denoted by the main verb, qelw. With it we have the accusative plural direct object from a)utoj, which is the intensive pronoun used as the personal pronoun third person because it was not carried over from the Attic Greek. It is translated “them,” “also if anyone would desire to harm or to hurt them.” That is the protasis.

The apodosis follows and begins with an adverb which refers to what precedes, o(utoj which should be translated “in this manner.” It is a reference to the weapons system and all of the uses of weapons which we have studied. It is a reference to the weapons system of the human heralds, the fire which is said to shoot out of their mouth. The details of the weapon are not the issue. Suffice to say it is a weapon. It is a good weapon because it is a lethal weapon, it does what a weapon is intended to do, kill. This is the only way that freedom can be maintained in the face of terrorism, paramilitarism, criminality, and all of the other systems whereby people seek to gain control of you by force, by threats, by violence. Intimidation by violence is the name of the game in a degenerate society.

We have the impersonal verb of necessity which follows, dei, and it is translated “must.” Then we have the accusative of general reference of a)utoj again, this time in the third person singular referring to the demonised person motivated to use terror against Moses and Elijah, translated “he.” The accusative of general reference is not properly the subject of the infinitive but an accusative of reference but an accusative of reference used to describe the person producing the action of the infinitive. So we simplify the matter by calling it the subject of the infinitive.

Next we have the aorist passive infinitive a)pokteinw which means to kill, “he must be killed” is the translation. The aorist tense is a constative aorist, it refers to the momentary action of being killed by the weapons system from the hands of the most spiritual men on the face of the earth. Spirituality does not mean that you should lie down and let people step all over you. There are always principles whereby you withdraw from any act of violence but there are also principles whereby violence becomes a necessary function. Violent people only understand violence. They do not understand reason, they are irrational, they are antiestablishment, and they want to settle everything in the manner of degeneracy, the use of violence. When you are faced with that kind of person then you must have a greater system of violence than they possess. Moses and Elijah possess a greater system of violence and they use it.

“in this manner they must be killed” is in the passive voice: the subjects, the demonised assassins receive the action of the verb, killed by the weapons systems in the hands of Moses and Elijah. This is the infinitive of actual result. Remember that demonisation in the cosmic system as we have recently studied it includes criminal arrogance. These assassins who reside in the cosmic system must be executed quickly by the two heralds. There isn’t time even to take them to court, they must be executed immediately in order that the mission assigned to them might be continued, the mission of communicating Bible doctrine.

The fact that Moses and Elijah had to kill quite a few people in Jerusalem did not in any way hinder their ministry or the plan of God. If it was going to hinder the plan of God then God would not have entrusted them with a weapons system before they left heaven for their next tour of duty. They are not irresponsible people with weapons. Irresponsible people should never have weapons. But we are not dealing with irresponsible people, we are dealing with people who when faced with the message of Bible doctrine are so antagonised as to immediately resort to violence and the fact that they are instantly killed does not hinder the ministry of Moses and Elijah. These assassins who reside in the cosmic system must be executed quickly and the speed of their punishment is effective, it cause other demonised human beings who have the same idea to be restrained. In effect this weapons system which came from the hand of God becomes a system of law. That is what law is all about, it is to restrain evil instincts, to restrain violence, to bring civilisation into society. If people do not have enough norms and standards that would restrain them then they must have something to fear that will restrain them, and that is the issue of law. This weapon in the hands of Moses and Elijah is so effective it produces fear.

Note: If you were smart you would never want anyone to fear you, only respect. Fear has to be used professionally in order to have effectiveness, but watch out for the people who fear you, they are the most dangerous people of all.

However, in this case the people who fear are less dangerous because they are so impressed by the use of that weapon.

Translation of verse 5 — “Furthermore if anyone desires to harm them, fire shoots out of their mouth, and it kills their enemies: also, if anyone would desire to hurt them in this manner, they must be killed.”

Principle: As long as God has a plan for your life there is no power or combination of powers on this earth which can remove you by death or torture, or destroy you in any way. In other words, remove you by violence.

No harm will come to the two heralds of the second advent until their ministry is finished, and then they will be the objects of violence. When people really understand what is taught they either respond or react. Moses and Elijah are so great at teaching doctrine that eventually there will be a reaction, but not until God permits it. One of the adjuncts to God’s plan for the believer is to security and protection to accomplish the divine mandates, but God never protects a person in such a way as to eliminate the volition of those who are evil because evil people must be responsible for their own evil. Evil people must be responsible for their own decisions. God provides a system of security for these two men, a system of security that does not in any way hinder the volition of evil people. They leave heaven with this weapon and they do not use it in any evil way, it is dormant unless it is necessary to save their lives. In this way God protects them.

As long as the believer is alive on the earth God has a plan for his life, and only those believers who are consistent in perception of doctrine have a personal sense of destiny, and the execution of the will of God demands exemption from any harm, including physical death by violence.

The crisis personality in general

The key to the crisis personality is abnormal pressure, unusual situations and circumstances. Abnormal pressure comes generally from historical disasters. The crisis personality, either through thought or speech or action, or a combination thereof, leads and dominates in disaster. There are three ways in which the crisis personality can meet a disaster: thought, speech, action. Sometimes it is a combination. The crisis personality can think, speak and act in abnormal circumstances of adversity, and therefore the crisis personality, through these three systems, dominates in disaster so that the people involved in the adversity are delivered, encouraged, changed, or in some other way profit from the disaster.

The profit is not always victory but some form of blessing at that time or a later time. The crisis personality may be a good or a bad person, he may be pleasant or obnoxious, he may be attractive or unattractive, but he is always controversial. The crisis personality emerges as the man of the hour in the greatest historical disaster, like Winston Churchill. The crisis personality has the ability to think under pressure, the true definition of courage, and he may even be a great public speaker whose message in historical disaster turns the tide. Often, but not always, the crisis personality does not appear to adjust too well to normal times and normal circumstances, like the hero who cannot adjust the routine of garrison duty or civilian life. Generally speaking the crisis personality possesses great honour, integrity, has a strong sense of responsibility plus great leadership ability which reaches its peak of expression under disastrous circumstances. Once the crisis is past the crisis personality is all too often forgotten. Illustration: Ecclesiastes 9:14-15 — “There was a small city, with a few men in it; and a great king came to it, and surrounded it, and constructed huge siege works against it [that is the crisis]: and there was found in it [the besieged city] a humble but very wise man [crisis personality], who delivered the city by his wisdom; yet, afterward no one remembered that humble yet wise man.” He was the crisis personality but he was forgotten.

A veteran of the Marlborough wars once wrote down this sentiment:

“God and the soldier we adore,

In time of danger, not before.

The danger past, and all things cited,

God is forgotten, and the soldier slighted.”

In time of disaster people follow the leadership of the crisis personality, but once the disaster is over the same people are often embarrassed by their bad decisions which created the disaster in the first place. Therefore they blot out the embarrassment of their own failures and simultaneously they blot out the one who rectified their failures.

The crisis personality in particular

1. The believer with momentum inside of the divine dynasphere is designed to be a crisis personality. He is prepared to be a crisis personality by continued momentum.

2. The believer as a crisis personality must have a personal sense of destiny. This comes from gate four of the divine dynasphere, the momentum gate, perception and application of doctrine.

3. The believer as a crisis personality must have control of his life in normal times so that he will have control of his life under pressure. No one can be a crisis personality unless he has control of his life in normal times, for it must go over to control of his life in abnormal times, under pressure. If you do not have control of your life in normal circumstances there is no way that you will have control of your life under pressure.

4. The believer as a crisis personality must make good decisions from a position of strength. If he does it under normal circumstances he will make good decisions from a position of strength in time of pressure and disaster.

5. The believer as a crisis personality must possess right priorities. These right priorities must come from his perception of Bible doctrine: the function of honour, integrity, virtue under pressure, and at all times, of course, orientation to the plan of God. Right priorities are not developed in a crisis, right priorities must be developed before the crisis. Right priorities developed before the crisis mean persistence and consistency in perception of Bible doctrine.

6. Therefore the believer as a crisis personality is spiritually prepared for disaster. Nothing greater exists than to be spiritually prepared for disaster and any abnormal circumstance of life.

7. Sometimes the pattern of the crisis personality is low profile during normal times, but emerging from obscurity to stand in the gap during the crisis.

8. The crisis results from a maximum number of bad decisions on the part of someone, therefore the crisis was created by the failure of the general public. All crises are the result of a number of bad decisions on the part of the general public. God uses that crisis to introduce His man of the hour — like David in Israel. The crisis personality then combines the use of divine power with acquired spiritual resources. The divine power is always there but you, through your own positive volition, must acquire the spiritual resources. No one can do it for you and there is no way to be a crisis personality without it. God uses prepared men. God’s prepared men emerge in time of crisis — like Moses in the Exodus, David in the Goliath crisis,. Elijah in the Ahab crisis, Isaiah in the Assyrian crisis, Paul in the Nero crisis, and in the time of the eschatology of the devil’s desperation, Moses and Elijah, facing the greatest historical crisis of history.

We move now to other special powers given to these men. To whom much is given, much is expected, and God does not give any system of power to the believer unless he has the sense of responsibility, the integrity to handle that power and that authority. So we recognise immediately that Moses and Elijah on their second tour of duty in the time of greatest historical crisis were qualified to receive and to utilise these special powers.

We begin verses 6 with the nominative plural from the immediate demonstrative pronoun o(utoj, it is referring to Moses and Elijah. It is correctly translated, “these,” the two great human heralds of the second advent, two great crisis personalities. With this we have the present active indicative of the verb e)xw which means to have. Anyone who is a crisis personality must have the necessary spiritual resources and others deemed necessary by God, in order to fulfil their mission. The progressive present tense signifies the action of a state of persistence, present linear aktionsart. The active voice: Moses and Elijah produce the action of the verb. The indicative mood is declarative represent the verbal idea from the viewpoint of reality. These men are given supernatural powers to fulfil their ministry. They will fulfil their ministry and not be distracted by supernatural powers. Only the arrogant are distracted by being given unusual ability or extra-natural power.

With this we have the accusative singular direct object from e)cousia, which means “authority.” It refers here to the great authority of Moses and Elijah. God does give great authority to anyone who is not prepared to use it. In order to exercise authority properly one must have honour, integrity, virtue, the divine perspective in every sense of the word, must avoid all forms of arrogance [cosmic one with its various gates of interlocking systems of arrogance]. The only possible way, therefore, to exercise this power properly is to do so in a state of true humility. Both Moses and Elijah possess these characteristics, though in their first tour of duty on this earth they failed with regard to this principle. Moses and Elijah, the human heralds, have the authority or the power. Authority, of course, means power, and that is why in the Greek it is often used both ways. We can translate it, “these have the power.” It includes great authority.

Then we have the verb in the infinitive form: the aorist active infinitive of kleiw. Kleiw means to shut, and with the accusative singular direct object o)uranoj it means to shut down the sky. It is an agricultural term. The Bible must be interpreted in the time in which it was written and it refers to economic disaster. That is exactly what authority they have, to bring about economic disaster. Why economic disaster? Because of all the systems of disaster that make the individual realise the fallacy of his volition, his failure in taking responsibility for his own decisions, economic disaster does this in the best possible and objective way. Once people face economic disaster they face the realities of life. They can see where they have failed or succeeded. Some people come through economic disaster very well and some do not, and it is always a very clear-cut picture as to whether we have failed or succeeded in making good or bad decisions — good decisions from a position of strength; bad decisions from a position of weakness.

But there is even a greater reason for this and that is the fact that economic disaster brings a maximum number of people to a point of helplessness. Helplessness can go in either one of two ways. A helpless person or a helpless population can either become a hopeless population or they can rise to the occasion and be a crisis population. It is the difference between being a winner or a loser. A helpless population always gives up and when it does it always becomes hopeless and goes into some form of slavery or becomes some category of loser. As a result of being a loser enslavement is in order. The communists have discovered this principle and that is why they work overtime to make populations of various countries feel hopeless so that they can be exploited for communist conquest of the world, and these people become losers in their helplessness. But to face the crisis in a helpless state and to have spiritual resources from the Word of God causes the individual to become a winner. Moses and Elijah are winners and they are going to give that particular concept of doctrine to the population.

“These [Moses and Elijah] have authority and power to shut down the heavens [the sky].” The constative aorist tense has to do with the fact or action extended over a period of time. They can cut it off and they can start it again. The active voice: they have this power. The infinitive of intended result is used when a result is indicated as fulfilling a deliberate objective. The objective is to bring people back to reality in a time of hopelessness and helplessness. That means to bring them first to the reality of the cross, the reality of eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, for this is the beginning of solution in time of hopelessness. Hopelessness and helplessness combine often to open up for the first time the volition of the individual. People who have rejected the gospel, people who have rejected Bible doctrine as believers, people who have become discouraged through a series of events, then have the reality that only God can intervene on their behalf, and they become positive toward the things of God, Bible doctrine as communicated in this case by Moses and Elijah. Moses and Elijah pull brands from the burning. That is, they evangelise and many people are saved in this time of great historical crisis. Also many believers who have been living in the cosmic system, whose priorities are all mixed up and who have put Bible doctrine on the bottom priority, now raise it to the top and begin to enter into a system of solution in their personal lives in time of national or international crisis. Economic disaster forces people to face reality, and being forced to face reality at that point in the crisis, they become either a winner or a loser. The crisis means permanent winner or permanent loser in the spiritual realm. For some believers in becoming losers in time of economic crisis eventually die the sin unto death. Their lives are absolutely useless and they merely demonstrate the power of God in disciplining the believer for his failure to have a personal sense of destiny from perception of doctrine, his failure to make decisions from a position of strength, and his failure to maintain control of his life through spiritual resources provided under the concept of logistical grace.

Next we have a sub-final purpose clause. It begins with the conjunction i(na. Why are they given these unusual powers? This is a time of great crisis, three and a half years of the most concentrated crisis in all of history, the time of the eschatology of the devil’s desperation. The conjunction i(na introduces a sub-final or a semi-final purpose clause which denotes the direction of the action in the main verb toward a given result. This given result is anticipated. We translate it “so that.”

With it we have a negative verb. We have the negative mh plus the present active subjunctive of brexw, “so that rain may not fall.” Again, we are talking about an agricultural economy at the time of the writing of the Bible, and lack of rain meant economic disaster. In our country today economic disaster means lack of basic industries. (High technology is no good without basic industry to support it) No system of economy will work unless it has a good foundation.

The crisis has only one solution, and this is why Moses and Elijah were sent by God in this time of the devil’s desperation. The solution is a spiritual solution, a spiritual solution which begins by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and then the daily decisions which must be made in the face of every form of disaster: the decisions to put the Word of God first, the decision to grow in grace above everything else, the understanding of the utilisation of logistical grace, the function of the three stages of the faith-rest drill, the importance of the rebound technique to avoid cosmic involvement. Getting back to basics is the thing that counts as far as the solution is concerned. And from those basics, growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and saviour, Jesus Christ.

When these two men came people were so mixed up during this last half of the Tribulation. Believers were mixed up because they had ignored doctrine; unbelievers were mixed up because of the usual problems of involvement in the cosmic system. And so two men were sent from heaven by God in the middle of the Tribulation to face the most mixed-up population the world has ever known — filled with confusion and false ideas about almost every subject. How are they going to get the attention of the world? How are they going to focus their attention on the fact that it is spiritual solution that is necessary in historical crisis? Well, they are going to do it by having certain authority, certain power, certain ability, certain talents that will eventually focus attention on the message. They are going to be given extra-natural powers, not to gain control of people, not to build any personal empire, but to focus attention on Bible doctrine in a time of great adversity.

So the translation: “These have the power to shut up the sky, so that rain may not fall.” The customary present tense denotes what reasonably be expected to occur following the pattern of Elijah’s original ministry in 1 Kings 17:1, “Now Elijah said to Ahab, ‘As the Lord, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, definitely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word’.” It is a duplication of the power given to Elijah in the great crisis of Ahab as the king of northern Israel. God raised up Elijah at that time and in order to get the attention of the people and to make them realise that the most important thing in life is Bible doctrine he was given certain supernatural powers. And they related to the economy for when people hurt economically that is when they begin to look around for answers, and that is exactly what happened. Cf. Luke 4:25; James 5:17. All power on the part of Elijah is going to be demonstrated so that people will listen to Bible doctrine. That is the proper use of power, to give the Word of God a hearing.

The active voice: Moses and Elijah as the two human heralds of the second advent will have the power to shut down the economy in order that people will listen to Bible doctrine. The subjunctive mood plus the negative mh is the subjunctive of prohibition. With this we have accusative of the extent of time which has as its final object h(mera, meaning days, “during the days of their prophetic ministry.” The word for prophetic ministry is a descriptive genitive from the noun profhteia which means communication of doctrine. It doesn’t mean teaching prophecy although it is translated “prophetic ministry”. It is actually a doctrinal ministry, for as we have already seen both the Greek words and the Hebrew words simply mean preaching doctrine, which we call forth telling. Then from that doctrine comes the future, and that would be foretelling. So the words prophet and prophecy don’t mean predicting the future as it is used in a modern connotation, it means someone who communicates doctrine. And, of course, the communication of doctrine deals with the past, the present, and the future. And so “in the days of their prophetic ministry” means the communication of Bible doctrine.

While the first authority or power given to these two heralds of the second advent is related to the ministry of Elijah, the second authority or power is related to the ministry of Moses. Moses had the power to turn water into blood in Exodus 7:19-25.

In focusing on Moses and what is coming up in the next phrase we need to go back and remember Moses for a moment. Moses grew up in the palace of the greatest line of Pharaohs that ever lived in the greatness of that country, when Egypt was the greatest empire in the world. He grew up with the royal family. Moses was going to be the next Pharaoh of Egypt, he was by far the smartest and the greatest and with that in mind he was groomed for his future position. He studied extensively in all of the Egyptian colleges, he became a great architect and built two of the treasure cities, the treasure cities through which he marched during the Exodus. He also was a great military man. He was also a musical genius and a great writer. In fact, he was multitalented in every possible way.

But about the time when Moses was about to take over as Pharaoh Moses discovered his own race, the Jews in slavery, and that is when he identified himself with them. Eventually that great passage in Hebrews 11, “he did not fear the wrath of the king, but was occupied with the Lord”. As such he identified himself with his people and renounced the throne of Egypt. He had great training, he met many a crisis while he was preparing to be the king of Egypt, but the crisis was even greater when it came to removing the Jews from slavery. He was a man who had great humility and combined with his ability that made him one of the greatest men of genius in all of history. He was therefore given by God fantastic power. He would never abuse that power, he would never use that power to gain ascendancy over anyone. He did not use his power to liberate the Jews to become his slaves, he used that power to make them a free people even though they couldn’t handle freedom and even though the first generation failed completely in freedom.

So Moses became the great liberator in Israel. In order to do that he had to face a very jealous son of the jealous father. For his rival had died while he was forty years in the wilderness and when he came back to Egypt he faced his son, Amenhotep II, who had all of his father’s stubbornness without his father’s genius. So God gave great power to Moses in the liberation, the freedom from slavery of the Jews. And now this is mentioned in the middle of Revelation 11:6. It begins with the conjunction kai, followed by the present active indicative e)xw which, again, is used for God giving special power to special people, “and they have.” The progressive present tense, present linear aktionsart. The active voice: Moses and Elijah as the two human heralds produce the action. The indicative mood is declarative representing the verbal idea from the viewpoint of reality. And, again, we have that same accusative direct object from e)cousia, and it means both power and authority. It is anarthrous, there is no definite article, emphasising the qualitative aspect of the noun rather than its mere identity. This is said to be in the prepositional phrase that follows, e)pi plus the genitive of u(dor, “over water.” He was given “power over the waters.”

What power was given to him is mentioned in the infinitive that follows: the present active infinitive of the verb strefw which means to turn. The descriptive present or pictorial present. The active voice: Moses and Elijah had the power, the infinitive of intended result. In time of terrible economic depression one of the worst things to have go bad is water. So he is going to deny them the use of water, “to turn the waters into blood.” In Exodus 7:20 Moses had that same power. That was the first plague of Egypt.

Next we have the intensive use of the conjunction kai, translated “in fact.” Then the aorist active infinitive from patassw which means to strike. The constative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety and therefore over a period of their ministry, three and a half years, they will have this power. How much they use it is not recorded. Moses and Elijah as human heralds produce the action, this is the infinitive of intended result in which a deliberate objective is being fulfilled. The objective is to focus attention on Bible doctrine. In fact “they strike the land with every plague”; “every plague” refers to the plagues which Moses performed in BC 1441.

Corrected translation: “These [Moses and Elijah] have power to shut up the sky, so that rain may not fall in the days of their prophetic ministry: furthermore they have power over the waters to turn them into blood, in fact to strike the land with every plague as often as possible.”

Principle: Both Moses and Elijah will function in the Tribulation as they had in their past ministries. For one thing is obvious: neither man ever abused the extra-natural and supernatural powers given to them. No man can ever be great in history, in any area, if he abuses power and authority. All true greatness in every field of life depends upon the proper use of authority without its abuse. Moses and Elijah demonstrated the fact that no matter how much authority, how much power, how much of supernatural activities were assigned to them they would never abuse it. They would never use it for any form of self-gain but they would utilise these things to focus attention on the Word of God. They would teach doctrine under the power of God the Holy Spirit and they will verify their ministry with these miracles they will perform. But notice: there is the basic power for communication of doctrine; the greatest power of all, the filling of the Holy Spirit; but there is also another system of power and this power is in the performing of certain miracles.

We live in a time when the performing of miracles is not necessary. The reason is that we have the completed canon of scripture and the Word of God is alive and powerful. But before the canon was completed and during this period of the last three and a half years of the Tribulation miracles are a power, a sign. The problem always comes in realising, Why miracles? Are miracles simply to alleviate suffering? Never. Miracles are designed to focus attention on the gospel. If miracles were designed to alleviate suffering then why didn’t Jesus heal everyone while He was on earth? He didn’t. He only healed a few when there was an opportunity to present the message. It is the doctrine that has the greatest power, and so under the ministry of the Holy Spirit Bible doctrine is communicated to people with free will so that they can accept it or reject it. Miracles are merely designed to get people to be positive long enough to hear doctrine. Most people, of course, abuse such power as miracles by simply using it to draw attention to self and in order to gain control over people. But the objective of miracles is not to gain control over people but to give people an opportunity to focus attention on doctrine. Then they can say yes or no to the doctrine. The key, then, is doctrine.

So two kinds of power are given to Moses and Elijah, the power of miracles. They will not abuse it, they will use it properly in order to focus attention on their message. Never has the land of Israel had such great opportunity to be saved as during this ministry of Moses and Elijah for they will speak under the power of God the Holy Spirit and they will perform miracles so that their message is heard. The land has its greatest opportunity for salvation and spiritual growth. Never will the power of negative volition, however, be so great for this is the eschatology of the devil’s desperation. Satan is now confined to the earth and in his desperation he is going to fight these two men with every possible miracle, with every use of power, with every system of aggrandisement. Miracles or plagues are not necessary, again, in the Church Age to give credibility to the teacher, but they are necessary in the Tribulation where God the Holy Spirit only indwells a few, those who communicate doctrine, and miracles are used to focus attention on the message of Spirit-filled men. Once the canon of scripture was completed doctrinal communication became the order of the day without verification from miracles. The reason is obvious. Every believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit in this dispensation plus the fact that ever believer has the divine dynasphere which replaced the need for miracles in verifying the message. And since this is the dispensation of the divine dynasphere it is not necessary to provide any credibility to miracles. We do not live in the age of miracles. God still performs supernatural acts under certain conditions but all of the miracle gifts have been removed.

In the Tribulation, however, miracles are used as a system of authority to focus attention on the message of Moses and Elijah. They function from Jerusalem and will have a world-wide ministry, possibly through television and some satellite system which will be in operation at that time.

Verse 7, the murder of the two witnesses. No man is able to assassinate them, they will be assassinated by Satan’s number two man in his organisation, Abaddon, the prince of all of Satan’s undercover and terrorist activities.

We begin with the conjunction kai, translated “Now” since it is sequential. With this we have a very important temporal conjunction o(tan, it means that as long as God’s plan for their lives continues nothing will harm them. But once it is finished that is something else, “Now when.” This temporal conjunction introduces an indefinite temporal clause in which we are going to discover that there will come a time when this great ministry of these two men will be concluded. Next is the aorist active subjunctive of the verb telew, “Now when they had finished their testimony.” The aorist tense is a culminative aorist, it views the completion of their testimony in its entirety but regards it from the viewpoint of its existing results. They will be removed by death. The active voice: Moses and Elijah produce the action on their second tour of duty, and the subjunctive mood is a potential subjunctive used to form an indefinite temporal clause, therefore a potential subjunctive implying a future reference qualified by the element of contingency.

Finally, we have their ministry summarised in the accusative singular direct object from marturia. Marturia means testimony in court. They have come from heaven to testify with regard to God’s plan for the lives of mankind. We have the possessive genitive plural from a)utoj, “their” testimony.

Corrected translation: “Now when they had finished their testimony.”

Here are two of the greatest men in all of history as far as communication of doctrine is concerned, and from them we are going to extrapolate a principle:

No one is indispensable but the Lord

1. There comes a time when the best of ministries are completed and the Lord recalls His servant to heaven.

2. No matter how great the ministry there is a time in human history when that ministry is completed and another must take its place.

3. God uses many different people in many historical situations, different people for different situations.

4. For example, the men God used in the Reformation would be very ineffective today, and vice versa.

5. No one is indispensable in the Lord’s service. God has a right time for the right man — when he should begin and when he should terminate.

6. The question arises: How is the right man determined? He must be a believer, obviously. He must have a spiritual gift of communication. He must be dedicated to the study of the Word of God above all else, and with that dedication God will provide all forms of preparation. There are those who have the gift of pastor-teacher who never succeed because they have no dedication to the study of the Word of God.

7. The power is in the Word, not in the personality of the communicator.

8. However, no matter how great the communicator, no matter how great the man, there comes a time when his work is finished. When his work is finished God removes that man by physical death, although in some case he may be permitted to remain on earth to enjoy some of the results of a faithful ministry — but not too often.

9. Humility accepts this principle of doctrine while arrogance fights it to the bitter end. Without humility the teacher of the Word of God has neither happiness nor a sense of personal destiny.

10. So it boils down to the fact that no matter how great the servant of the Lord has been and no matter how he has been used of the Lord, he is not indispensable. Only the Lord who provides and sustains His servants is indispensable, and in His great wisdom the Lord provides the minister to meet the needs and the volitional status of a specific generation.

Therefore the great differences in personality and communication from one generation to another is not the issue. The issue is: Is he God’s man?

Moses and Elijah had great ministries in the past but ministries not completed, for Moses did not lead the Jews into the land and Elijah was replaced by Elisha. Moses was replaced by Joshua. God had a time for their ministry and then it was all over.

The principle is that God only uses prepared men. Too often either cosmic involvement or lack of training hinders a potential minister. A minister is only a potential servant of the Lord until he is prepared. This means both academic preparation, adversity preparation, personality preparation (arrogance versus humility), and that dedicated scale of values which always places Bible doctrine first. Moses and Elijah are those two great servants of the Lord who did not complete their ministries during their lifetime on this earth. Both were hindered from completing their ministries through arrogance. For Moses it was the arrogance of self-righteousness, “Must we bring water from this rock”; for Elijah it was the arrogance of self-pity when he said in 1 Kings: “I, only I am left, and they seek my life to take it away.” Now Moses and Elijah are permitted to finish their ministries on their second tour of duty to the earth. The completion of their ministry results in their dramatic death and resuscitation. But until their ministry of announcing the second advent and the teaching of doctrine and the evangelising of positive volition is completed Moses and Elijah have a world-wide ministry and message from Jerusalem. As the heralds of the King Moses and Elijah are faithful in teaching the Word, emphasising the approach of the greatest of all eschatological events, the time of our Lord’s tactical victory.

“Now when they had finished their testimony.” We have noted the principle that no one is indispensable but the Lord. There comes a time when the best of the Lord’s servants have finished their ministry and the Lord calls them home to heaven. Another must take their place. Moses and Elijah are those two great servants of the Lord who did not complete their ministry during their lifetime on this earth, and both were hindered from the completion of their ministry through their own failure during their first tour of duty. Moses was the most humble man in the world but one point of arrogance ended his ministry as far as leading the Jews into the promised land. But now Moses and Elijah are permitted to finish their ministry in the last three and a half years of the Tribulation. The completion of their ministry results in a very dramatic death and resuscitation but until their ministry of communicating doctrine and announcing the second advent is completed Moses and Elijah have a world-wide testimony.

Principle

1. The reason for antagonism against Moses and Elijah emphasises the effectiveness of their ministry. The reason for antagonism is that any form of apostasy, any form of cosmic involvement, becomes antagonistic toward the truth. When those who are involved in the cosmic system hear the truth they may not even identify it as truth but it arouses their antagonism.

2. For centuries people have tried to solve their problems through the key word “improvement.” People go on great crusades to improve environment, improve the circumstances of life. And that word “improvement” is a distraction to the solution of problems, for countless times in history crusaders and historical trends have resulted in the improvement of environment, have resulted in times of great freedom for segments of the population of this earth, but improvement has never been the answer, and never will be the answer. It was demonstrated at the very beginning of history that perfect environment is not the answer because man has free will and man is free to fail even as he is free to succeed. He is free to reject truth or to accept truth, and the only way man can maintain a system of blessing and happiness in this life is through the perception and application of truth. Our first parents demonstrated the fact that perfect environment was not the answer to their problems and the last dispensation in history, one thousand years of perfect environment, will again demonstrate that same fact. For when Satan is released from his one-thousand-year imprisonment there will be a Gog revolution against perfect environment. All of this demonstrates once again that improvement of society is never the answer. “Improvement” is not really a key word. Instead the key word should be “regeneration” because regeneration goes with truth; improvement goes with better environment. But what good is better environment without capacity for it.

3. People need truth rather than better environment. There is no way that you can pass environmental laws that will deal with the volition of the next generation. If the next generation wants to turn every national park into a concrete jungle the hours that people have spent trying to protect the environment are ridiculous. We in this generation can only answer for our own decisions from our own scale of values. We cannot in any way pass laws or enter into crusades that will either hinder or help the volitional function of the next generation. Every generation must make its own way by its own decisions, decisions from its own scale of values. The one thing that goes from one generation to another are not the laws of the land and the crusades of this generation, but truths. In every generation truth will exist; truth will not be destroyed. The Word of God lives and abides forever, there is no way to destroy truth. Therefore Moses and Elijah are on the right track for they recognise this principle. They teach truth; they communicate Bible doctrine; they do not try to change the environment. They have the power to kill all the bad guys but they do not do so. The only ones they kill are the ones who threaten their right to free speech, those who have locked-in negative volition and would actually eliminate truth. Therefore we can learn something from the Tribulation: crusaders are inevitably arrogant. Their crusades which are going to change the world never change anyone or anything because the key to the angelic conflict is human volition and you can’t change human volition, even God will not coerce human volition. All crusading is a total waste of time.

Everyone is looking for some way to improve the environment, to improve themselves, but the people who really improve themselves are the people who learn Bible doctrine, daily, consistently, truth. People are working vigorously today to change things, not realising that what is changed today (perhaps for the better, perhaps not) can be changed for the worse tomorrow, and that change based on the crusader arrogance principle never does any good. Better environment is only made by truth in the soul. When you have truth or Bible doctrine in the soul you provide better in the soul which manifests itself in better environment around you.

4. Man has already demonstrated that he is no better with good environment.

5. This is God’s last lesson to the human race: the historical lesson of the Millennium with its perfect environment. And these men announce that Millennium as they teach the gospel and teach other areas of Bible doctrine.

6. Moses and Elijah teach the lesson that even perfect environment cannot solve man’s problems. Man needs a challenge; man needs to work by the sweat of his brow. The woman needs to learn to entertain herself or to get into business herself.

7. Along comes Moses and Elijah saying that environment is not the solution. Man does not need improvement, man needs regeneration.

Well, this aroused the antagonism of the masses. People believed in improvement of the world rather than the regeneration of mankind. Even in the last half of the Tribulation people were trying to improve the world. Without regeneration improvement of environment is meaningless because man does not have the capacity to deal with better or even perfect environment. Moses and Elijah do not seek to improve the devil’s world but to rescue mankind from cosmos diabolicus. This arouses the antagonism of Satan as nothing else will do. Once everyone has been face to face with the truth and the issues of truth the ministry and testimony of Moses and Elijah is finished. That is why we have this phrase, “When they had finished their testimony.” That means an assassination is coming up.

Verse 7, “Now when Moses and Elijah had finished their testimony.” We move on now to see the assassination of Moses and Elijah on their second tour of duty into this world in serving the Lord.

We start out with the nominative singular subject of the noun qhrion. Like another noun, zoion, in the book of Revelation it is also translated “beast” in the King James version. The word qhrion means monster wild animal or beast. In this verse the word qhrion refers to the prince of the fallen angels that we studied in Revelation 9:11. His name is Abaddon. This is the person who is Satan’s super hit man, he is the prince and the ruler of the terrorist activity under Satan. After leading the first demon assault army in Revelation chapter nine this demon prince is assigned other duties such as the assassination of Moses and Elijah.

With this we have an articular present active participle which helps to identify him. The verb is a)nabainw and it means to ascend, and with it we have the noun for the abyss. The definite article is used as a relative pronoun; the present tense is dramatic. The active voice: Abaddon, the prince of demons, produces the action of the verb. The participle is circumstantial.

When we put it all together we have: “Now when Moses and Elijah had finished their testimony, the beast monster [the demon in charge of terrorist activities] who comes up.”

And then the preposition e)k plus the ablative of a)bussoj [abyss], “from the abyss.” The terrorist activity of Abaddon is now described, beginning with the future active indicative of the verb poiew, which means here to make, “he will make.” The future tense is predictive. The active voice: Abaddon produces the action. The indicative mood is declarative for a statement of future history. And with this we have the accusative singular direct object from polemoj, meaning war, “he will make war,” or it can be translated in the idiom form, “he will fight against.” “He will make war against them”; “against them” is the preposition meta plus the genitive of a)utoj used as a personal pronoun, against Moses and Elijah.

We now have two more verbs, both in the future tense. The first one is the future active indicative from nikaw which means to win, to overcome, to have victory. The predictive future anticipates the fact that the ministry of Moses and Elijah in their second tour of duty has now come to an end. The active voice: Abaddon, the prince of demons, is the terrorist commander for Satan. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of this event in history in the future. Then we have the accusative plural direct object, again referring to them. We have one more verb, the future active indicative of a)pokteinw which means to kill by violence, “and will kill,” “he will both overcome and kill them.” The active voice: Abaddon is the hit man and does the assassinating. At this particular time the ministry of these two men is over and their defensive weapon is no longer operational.

Translation of verse 7 — “Now when they [Moses and Elijah as the heralds of the second advent] had finished their testimony [their ministry], the beast monster [Abaddon, the demon ruler of Revelation 9:11] who comes up from the abyss will make war against them; he will both overpower and kill them.”

This is under the permissive will of God and we will see some of the reasons.

Principle: Frustrated arrogance gravitates to violence

1. This principle explains the reason for so much violence in the human race. The content of violence simply measures the content of arrogance in the human race. Arrogance and violence go together.

2. It also explains Satan’s use of violence to seek victory in the angelic conflict. Satan, before even human history began, used violence to try to solve his problems.

3. Neither Satan nor the human race has ever learned the great lesson that violence does not solve problems. In fact, conversely, violence intensifies problems and creates new problems.

4. The assassination of Moses and Elijah is the manifestation of frustrated arrogance.

5. When any creature uses violence, including murder, to try to solve or remove a problem he destroys the very structure of civilisation and removes freedom from human modus operandi.

6. When people or any creature [angelic] murders to remove a problem they suffer from that malady of arrogance which tries to solve one’s problems through the ultimate in violence, the murder of someone who seems to be the problem, or people who seem to be the problem, like anti-Semitism. It is a sign of stupidity.

7. Only God has the right to remove life or permit the removal of life from this world. In the case of Moses and Elijah He permits it. Until the conclusion of their ministry they are absolutely invulnerable to all Satanic attacks.

8. Only God’s law specifies under what conditions man will kill man legitimately. Under the laws of divine establishment human life is sacred, not to be tampered with except under two conditions: a. law enforcement and capital punishment; b. the killing of one’s country’s enemies as a representative of one’s nation in the military establishment.

9. The murder of Moses and Elijah does not solve Satan’s problems, it does not provide for the victory of the devil in the angelic conflict. In fact, it will intensify his problems as is always the case with murder.

10. Frustrated arrogance is never satisfied with the function of violence to solve the problem. To alleviate the frustration of arrogance people murder. Murder is the sign of an inner sin before it becomes and overt sin. The inner sin is arrogance. People murder because they are preoccupied with self and they see some person standing in the way and therefore forming an extension of their arrogant frustration. Frustrated arrogance is never satisfied by the violence it produces and motivates. Frustrated arrogance is intensified when the violent one becomes psychopathic, disoriented to life, disoriented to the rationales of life, and this frustration of arrogance gravitating to violence is going to be manifested in a very unusual way in the next chapter, the great Jewish holocaust at the end of the Tribulation.

Restraint requires humility

1. The key to freedom in all of human society is restraint from the basic virtue of humility. There can be no freedom without two factors: authority and virtue. But authority is a restrainer when the authority of the law is feared. Now we are talking about self-restraint from virtue, if you have it. Even with law many people do not have freedom. The legitimate authority does not always guarantee freedom. In a civilised society freedom is guaranteed by the virtue of the people in that society, and the basic virtue is humility. Humility imposes self-restraint.

2. Freedom demands privacy plus the sacredness of both property and life. Under the laws of divine establishment both property and life are sacred and you cannot have freedom without the sacredness of property and life.

3. For this Bible doctrine in the realm of establishment to be fulfilled man must use his freedom to practice restraint. Since all of us have freedom all of us cannot express our freedom without someone (and a lot of someone’s) practising restraint. Restraint is the manifestation of the basic virtue of humility.

4. Differences of opinion often lead to quarrels and where arrogance is involved quarrels lead to violence.

5. This explains murder within the framework of divine institution #3, the family. This is a very common practice in an arrogant society.

6. Arrogance removes restraint and self-control because arrogance is the antithesis of humility. Humility is a virtue; arrogance is the most basic of all sins, and not only is it a sin but it is a sin complex, as per cosmic one. With arrogance man seeks to solve his problems through violence which results in various categories of murder. (Arrogance has other ways of solving problems but we are looking at this one factor. Arrogance also tries to solve its problems through sex and makes sex a system for solving problems, which is a disaster and leads to terrible social degeneration).

7. Authority in life is designed to restrain the function of arrogance in man so that all members of the human race can use their freedom to fail or to succeed.

8. This is why we have governments, law-enforcement agencies, a judicial system. A judicial system may not be working too well at times but it is better than no judicial system, which is what vigilanteism is.

9. Respect for the law restrains the arrogant while virtue and integrity restrains the humble. Virtue restrains in a magnificent society; law restrains in a sick society. And when a sick society no longer fears the law then it becomes a degenerate society. In other words, restraint requires humility and the only way a society can ever properly express its freedom is to have a maximum number of people with virtue in that society. Virtue means humility. When you have, as we have today, an arrogant society, often disguising itself under self-effacement then you have first a hypocritical society, then a sick society, and then a degenerate society.

Neither Satan nor his hit man, Abaddon, are humble. They are saturated with arrogance. They form the conspiracy which leads to the murder of Moses and Elijah.

Principle: The Christian minister or Christian organisation or individual believer who advocates civil disobedience is both arrogant and evil.

1 John 3:12, “Not as Cain, who was motivated from that evil one [Satan, the inventor of the cosmic system], and consequently he murdered his brother with a sacrificial knife. And for what reason did he murder him? Because his deeds were evil.” The question arises: Why were his deeds evil? Because he was arrogant. Humility practices restraint; arrogance practices evil, “and those [deeds] of his brother were righteous [honourable, virtuous].” And so the first murder was committed in the human race and it forms one of the patterns for the expression of arrogance. Murder is one pattern, lasciviousness is another expression. These are expressions of arrogance in society. Many murders are merely the reflex of arrogance, for you see arrogance removes all restraints from the person who has it. When Satan became arrogant he removed all of the restraints on his own life and he said, “I will be like the most high God.” And the arrogant person takes all the restraints off his own life. “The laws are for the rest of you but not for me,” says the arrogant person, “I can kill anyone I want to, I am above the law.” That is the concept.

So murder always means the unlawful taking of someone’s life, since there are lawful ways in which someone’s life is taken. One of the most important of the lawful ways, and acts as a substitute for humility, since obviously in society in any given generation there are going to be a lot of people who are not humble, is the law with teeth in it, and the teeth in the law is capital punishment. It is ordained of God, it is not a man-made concept. In Romans 13:4 it is referred to as being a restraint. If people are arrogant they can only be restrained by the law, and they must fear the law, they must fear for their life. The only restraint an arrogant person understands is that he might lose his own life, that if he commits a certain crime or enters into a certain act of violence he might lose his life. And he is restrained because in his arrogance his life is more important to him than anything else in the world. Arrogance can only be restrained by capital punishment. And when in society you have no capital punishment the arrogant people have no fear of the law, and if they have no fear of the law it is easy under the right conditions to step over the law and enter into some form of lawlessness, whether it is lawlessness or something else.

So in Romans 13:4, “It [the law and government] is a minister of God to you for the purpose of good [the free function of the entire society]. But if you do evil [the source of evil is arrogance] keep on being afraid,” The only way you are restrained if you are an arrogant person is to keep on being afraid, “for it [the law] does not wear the sword for nothing; for you see it [the law] is the minister of God for the purpose of divine wrath on him who practices evil.”

You cannot restrain an arrogant society apart from capital punishment. A virtuous society is different, it is self-restraining and doesn’t have to be concerned about fear of the law. But a virtuous society depends on humility.

In Genesis 9:5,6 God ordained capital punishment for the human race as the only possible way for freedom to be perpetuated in history because the great enemy of freedom is arrogance. The French revolution can be summarised very simply: it was a maximum saturation of arrogance, it was the function of ego-mania. And you always have this terrible violence like the reign of terror in the French revolution when people are out from under restraint and have no virtue. In the case of the French revolution no one was practising capital punishment, except evil was murdering right and left. It took France a long time to recover from the evils of the French revolution. Arrogance must be restrained. The best way to restrain it is self-restraint and the worst way to restrain it is fear of the law, but both are restrainers. Virtue restrains arrogance individually, and that is the honourable way to go, but law is designed to also restrain arrogance.

Another form of legitimate killing of course is the soldier representing his country on the battle field. He functions impersonally and professionally to preserve the freedom of the nation. Were it not for war the human race would not be cleansed of its total degeneracy. Warfare is one of the few ways in which the human race recovers its freedom, so periodically warfare is a good thing.

Violence was originated by Satan, John 8:43,44. “Do you not understand what I am teaching you [Jesus asked]? It is because you cannot hear my word in the cosmic system. You are from your father the devil, and the desires [the policies] of your father [the devil] you wish to accomplish.”

Jesus is saying in effect that He has demonstrated the arrogance of the people in the time in which He lived. Then He adds: “He [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning.” Why? Arrogance produces all motivation for murder, “furthermore he does not stand in the truth, because there is no doctrine in him. Whenever he [Satan] communicates the lie, he speaks from his own personality: for he [Satan] is a liar, and the father of it.”

Under the same principle lying is motivated by arrogance. Why do we lie? Because in arrogance we don’t want to be shamed, we don’t want to be caught. So arrogance motivates lying just as arrogance motivates murder. That is why in this passage in John 8:44 the devil is described as not only a murderer from the beginning but he is also described as a liar and the father of it.

Jude 10,11, “But these reversionists malign what they do not understand; furthermore what things they do not understand by natural instincts [by emotion — most people do all of their learning by emotion; that’s why they are stupid, because emotion has no ability to think], as unreasonable [as emotional] creatures, by these false doctrines they receive for themselves corruption. Woe to them! They have gone the way of Cain [violence, terrorism, murder], they have rushed from illegal profit into Balaam’s error, they have been destroyed in Korah’s revolution.”

All of these have the same source, revolution, illegal profit, violence. All have the same base of arrogance.

In fact, in Romans 1:29, discussing a degenerate society, “Having been filled with all unrighteousness [lack of integrity and virtue], evil, greed, malice; full of jealously, murder, strife, deceit, conspiracy, slander,” all of these describe the degenerate society.

In Hosea 4:1-6 one of the things that destroyed the northern kingdom were these very things. “Hear the word of the Lord, ye sons of Israel: because the Lord has a lawsuit against the inhabitants of his client nation, because nothing about doctrine is being taught, nothing about grace is being applied, so that there is nothing of knowing God in the nation. Instead there is lying [the malfunction of justice in court], deceiving, and homicide, stealing, they use violence to rape, therefore blood reaches out and touches blood,” they have become a degenerate society, “Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away, even the animals in the field [are hurt by it], the birds of the air, the fish in the lake are dying off. Only let no one bring a lawsuit, let no one accuse another [in other words in a degenerate society people abuse and distort the law and start suing each other]: for your people are like those who bring charges against the priest [lawsuits to discredit the one teaching doctrine]. Therefore you have stumbled in the daylight, even the false prophet will stumble with you in the night [darkness], and [by the cycles of discipline] I will destroy your country. My nation is destroyed for lack of knowledge [of doctrine]: because you have rejected the principle of knowing doctrine, therefore I will reject you from being a client nation to me: since you have neglected the doctrine of your God, I will neglect your citizens.” In other words, I will let you follow your own volition. That means they will destroy themselves, which they did.

Murder, by the way, is the only overt sin listed in the classification of the seven worst sins in Proverbs 6:16-19. (In verse 17, murder is mentioned). “There are six things which the Lord hates: seven which are an abomination to his soul: arrogant involvement, a lying tongue [that comes from arrogance], hands that shed innocent blood [murder], conspiracy [that is from arrogance], feet that are quick to rush to evil [arrogance], a false witness who pours out lies against other people [that is arrogance], the person who causes dissension among brethren.” These are the worst of all sins and arrogance is behind them all.

Exodus 20:13, the corrected translation: “You will not commit murder.” It does not say “thou shalt not kill.” It is the qal imperfect of ratsach, “You will not murder.” Murder is the ultimate in the destruction of human freedom in the angelic conflict, it violates the principle of the sacredness of human life and the right of every individual to follow his own volition to his own destiny, failure or success.

In verse 8 we see the desecration of the dead bodies of the two human heralds. We begin with the connective conjunction kai translated “and,” and the nominative singular subject of ptoma which refers to a corpse. Generally it is used of a corpse where the person died from some form of violence. Regardless of how a person dies a corpse is an empty house. It has been vacated. Once death has taken place the soul, or in the case of Moses and Elijah, the soul and the spirit has vacated the body. What happens to the body is absolutely inconsequential. The body no longer has any meaning once the soul has departed from it in physical death. Taking this physical body and leaving it in the streets for all to see indicates the deadness of the souls of those arrogant persons involved in the cosmic system.

“And their corpses.” We have a possessive genitive plural from a)utoj used as a personal pronoun. The ellipsis demands some verbal form, so we insert “will be displayed,” “And their dead bodies [or corpses] will be exhibited [or displayed].” Then we have a prepositional phrase e)pi plus the genitive of plateia, “in the streets.” It is in one specific street. Then the descriptive genitive singular from megaj polij, “of the great city.” It is a reference to the city of Jerusalem where the Tribulational temple is constructed and where the two human heralds of the second advent have their ministry. Jerusalem is where the law was designed to restrain the arrogant, and virtue was designed for self-restraint. But the arrogant distorted lawmaking in the great city resulting in the fact that Jerusalem is now described as Sodom, after a city, and Egypt, after a nation.

The description of the great city from the spiritual standpoint: the nominative feminine singular of a qualitative relative pronoun o(stij. We translate it “which,” or a more detailed translation, “the sort which.” Then we have the present passive indicative of the verb kalew which means to call, “which is called,” “which is designated,” “which is named.” The perfective present tense refers to a fact which has come to be in the past but is emphasised as a present reality. The passive voice: Jerusalem receives the action of the verb. The indicative mood is declarative for s simple statement of fact, the state of Jerusalem at this time in the Tribulation.

The next word is an adverb and is very important. It means we are not to take this literally. It is the adverb pneumatikoj, and it means either spiritually or figuratively. We are to interpret the next words figuratively. There is a typical resemblance, an emblematic resemblance. In other words, pneumatikoj as an adverb means expressing one thing, Jerusalem, in terms normally denoting something else, like Sodom and Egypt. Translation: “And their dead bodies were displayed in the street of the great city which is called figuratively [spiritually, emblematically].” And then we have the words “Sodom” and “Egypt.” Sodom is Jerusalem’s moral degeneration during the closing days of the Tribulation; Egypt refers to the cosmic involvement of its citizens. Demonisation is very prominent in Jerusalem. Cosmic involvement in the sphere of religion as the devil’s ace trump has taken over there. Moral degeneration and religion, by the way, always go together, they compliment each other. Remember that Christianity is not a religion. Moral degeneration, social degeneration and religion always go together.

The adverb pneumatikoj raises a special question. The interpretation of the book of Revelation is in view. Too often the literal in Revelation is interpreted allegorically, and therefore that is wrong. There are many things in Revelation which are literal. The figurative or allegorical always has something in context to help us out, to help us understand. For example, when we noted “these are the two olive trees” we know that we were talking about a prophecy in Zechariah. Therefore we could go back there and identify and interpret without any problem. But sometimes there is no reference except in an allegorical sense and there will be something that will indicate that. For example, the conjunction o(j is one way of indicating that something is allegorical or figurative. In this case we have an adverb. The only reason, of course, for allegorised or spiritual interpretation is when the language of the original Greek somehow indicates that this is the way we must go. The Greek authorises it grammatically.

The identification of the city is given in the last phrase, beginning with the adverb used as a particle of place, o(pou, translated “where.” With this we have a conjunction kai, translated “even.” Then the subject, the nominative singular subject from kurioj, and a)utoj, used so many times, “their Lord.” Then the aorist passive indicative of staurow, which has to do with the saving work of Christ on the cross, “where their Lord was crucified.” The aorist tense is constative, contemplating the action of the verb in its entirety. The key death of our Lord on the cross: His first death bearing our sins, becoming our substitute; His second death, His work was finished and therefore He died physically, just as the work of Moses and Elijah is now finished and they have died physically. The passive voice: Christ receives the action of the verb. The indicative mood is declarative for a dogmatic statement of doctrine.

Translation of verse 8: “And their dead bodies will be exhibited in the street of the great city, which is figuratively designated Sodom and Egypt, even where their Lord was crucified.”

Principle: corpse arrogance

Taken from the phrase: “and their dead bodies will be exhibited in the street.”

1. It is arrogance or ignorance or both to display the corpses of those who have died, and in this case the corpses of two men who have been murdered because they taught Bible doctrine. It is arrogance on the part of the murderers and those in charge of the city to allow these corpses to remain on public display. They’re not lying in state, they’re lying in the gutter, and thousands of people are going by and laughing and ridiculing.

2. The death of those who teach doctrine, however, does not stop doctrinal teaching. Doctrinal teachers may die but the Lord always raises up others. By killing someone who teaches doctrine Satan has not won any victory over doctrine, he is still a loser. The display of the corpses is merely an attempt to say, “We have won, we have won,” kid’s stuff.

3. Doctrine is the power of God and God’s power does not stop because the teacher of doctrine is assassinated.

4. The death of the prophet does not cancel the prophecy; the death of the preacher does not stop the teaching of the Word of God.

5. The display of the two dead bodies does not imply any victory over truth.

6. Neither Moses nor Elijah are occupying dead bodies, they are back in heaven enjoying their interim bodies after a job well done. They are in a place of great happiness and blessing and all of the ridicule and all of the desecration of those dead bodies is not going to change a thing.

7. The vulgar display of a corpse is not a sign of victory but of defeat on the part of the displayers. They have actually advertised the fact that they are losers.

8. For killing the communicators of doctrine does not cancel the message of doctrine. They have made their point, they have led people to the Lord, they have helped believers grow in grace, their ministry is finished, and the results go on and on. Killing them hasn’t changed a thing.

9. The death of the speaker of truth does not imply the death of truth. Truth never dies, merely those who communicate it.

Because of the ministry of Moses and Elijah lives have been changed forever in one of the most desperate periods of all of history, the last half of the Tribulation. Therefore, the death of the communicators does not in any way hinder the impact of doctrine. Vincet Omnia Veritas — doctrine conquers all.

The literal city Jerusalem: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I long for you”

Note how Jerusalem is designated. First, “the great city.” That is because of David and of David’s greater son, our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the great city because it is the capital of the first and last client nation to God. What made the city great was Bible doctrine; what ruined the city was rejection of Bible doctrine.

The city is also called, in the second place, Sodom, referring to social degeneration, spiritual declension. Jerusalem in the middle of the Tribulation has been captured by negative volition. It is also called Egypt, after the empire Egypt. The empire of Egypt represent religion without reality, culture without truth, therefore power without principle, superficiality resulting in self-destruction.

The final designation: “even where their Lord was crucified.” Jerusalem is the place our Lord chose to die for our sins, to provide for us eternal salvation. The fact that Jerusalem does not respond to the message of Moses and Elijah in detail indicates that Jerusalem is the city of lost opportunities. In other words, living in a “holy” city doesn’t make you holy. It isn’t where you live that makes you holy, it is what you are that makes you holy, and only perception of doctrine can do that.

In verses 9 and 10 we note their celebration under the title “The devil’s Christmas.”

Not only did the evil people in Jerusalem go by and gloat over those corpses but there was a world-wide television coverage of the event. We have a saturated world-wide gloating for three and a half days.

We begin verse 9 with a connective conjunction kai, “and,” and the present active indicative of blepw, “And they will view.” Belpw ordinarily means to see; here it means to view. The present tense is a descriptive present, even a futuristic present denoting an event which has not yet occurred but is regarded as so certain that in thought it is contemplated as already occurring. In other words, this is a very dramatic thing. The world-wide television coverage of the event is, of course, a major item of news for three and a half days. The active voice: the television viewers as well as the personal viewers produce the action of the verb.

Then we have a prepositional phrase describing the general subject, those who view the dead bodies from all over the world. It is described by one preposition plus a number of nouns in the ablative: e)k plus the ablative case, “from.” The first phrase is poorly translated in the King James version, laoj, which means “people” generally but here it means “masses,” and laoj refers to the people living in Jerusalem. The second ablative is fulh, and it means tribe or tribes and refers to Jews who are living in the middle east, Jews from all the tribes of Israel, not just local Jews in Jerusalem. They are those who are especially interested because they have rejected the message of Moses and Elijah. A third ablative goes with the preposition, the ablative plural of glossa, meaning foreign languages. This will be given in many different languages. This news item will be broadcast in all of the languages of the world. Finally, we have one more ablative plural, e)qnoj, Gentiles come into the picture, “and nations.”

Verse 9, “And they from the masses and from tribes and many foreign languages and Gentiles nations will view their bodies for three and a half days.” The “three and a half days” is the accusative plural direct object, and the accusative plus the accusative of the extent of time. They will be viewed for three and a half days.

Because of the dynamic impact of their ministry and the antagonism of the fourth estate, a period of international gloating begins immediately after the assassination; and after it is reported both locally and throughout the world, probably by satellite. Obviously, something therefore akin to TV coverage by satellite is involved so that people all over the world in many nations can enjoy this moment of desecration, indicating the fact that the social degeneration implied in Jerusalem is an international problem among many nations and many people. The power of the press is seen in the reaction to the ministry of the two heralds, whose ministry has caused fear and anxiety both in the press and among the people of the world. This is obviously the fourth estate at their worst.

The purpose of the fourth estate is to report news but in time of arrogance and degeneracy this is distorted into that is called “slanting” the news, tampering with the facts and using the freedom of the press to propagandise one’s personal viewpoint. This is all involved in this phrase. This is a part of self-righteous crusader arrogance. Hence, the news media at the end of the Tribulation are just as demonised as the population whom they serve. And since the forces of evil obviously control the press at the end of the Tribulation this is neither sympathy nor outrage at the desecration of the corpses of the two witnesses. This is gloating. No sympathy, no outrage is reported by the press.

Note the principle that the fourth estate, the news media, can be a factor that either good or evil. Whether good or evil the freedom of the press is essential to human freedom, by the way, and the repercussions in any given generation merely reflect the general trend of human volition at that point of history. What are we to assume from this? Regardless of how poor the news reporting may be at any given time, one thing you should always be clear about: you should always be for the freedom of the press. No matter how much the press may abuse that freedom at any given time it doesn’t change the principle: freedom of the press is an essential part of free speech which is absolutely essential for the modus operandi of freedom.

Next we have a connective conjunction kai, emphasising a fact as surprising and noteworthy, and we translate it “furthermore.” Then we have a present active indicative of the verb a)fihmi plus the negative o)uk which goes with the indicative mood, “furthermore they did not permit.” The progressive present tense signifies the action in a state of persistence, present linear aktionsart. The active voice: not only the authorities in Jerusalem but the population in general are included in this verb. This is desecration of their bodies, a popular decision though obviously many believers and Jews in Jerusalem were not in agreement with it. However, they recognise the fact that neither Moses nor Elijah are occupying those bodies and therefore they are not disturbed by it.

Principle: Be careful what disturbs you. Most people get disturbed by inconsequential things and the best thing you can say for them it that it is loss of energy plus ear and tear on the soul.

Then we have the aorist passive infinitive from the verb tiqemi, “to be placed.” The constative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety, burial is in view here; “furthermore they did not permit their dead bodies to be placed in a tomb.”

This desecration was the arrogant reaction of those who assumed that an unburied body exposed to ridicule is the maximum insult of life. Actually, they are not insulting him at all, they are just showing how stupid they are. Death means that the body is no longer occupied, therefore the insult boomerangs. Those who desecrate their bodies will be miserable while they are still alive. There is no greater manifestation of total unhappiness than being a gloater. The ones guilty of desecration are miserable, not the ones who are the recipients of their gloating. Moses and Elijah are very happy in heaven enjoying marvellous things. The principle applies in every area of life: there is no happiness in gloating. Gloating is the sign of a very disoriented and unhappy person. You cannot build your happiness on someone else’s unhappiness. Gloating is the sum total of arrogance expressing itself in malignant satisfaction. The malignant satisfaction is temporary and the arrogance signifies permanent unhappiness. Add to this another principle: gloaters have no virtue, no happiness, no capacity for life.

Patrick (St. Patrick) was born in Scotland just a few miles from what is now called Glasgow in the year 396. He died on 17 March, 493. The day of his death became known as St Patrick’s Day.

His father was a Celtic Christian. He was not a Roman Catholic and never was. He wrote a book called Confessions, which has 25 chapters and he never mentions Rome and he never mentions the Pope. When he was a boy he was kidnapped by Irish pirates and was sold into slavery to a chieftain in northern Ireland. He escaped, was recaptured, and escaped a second time and boarded a ship that was going to Britain. While in Britain he became a refugee in an area where he found Christ as his saviour.

A few years later he returned to his home as a young man. One day while he was studying the scriptures he had what appeared to be a vision. He heard voices from the Irish coast calling for help. So he went to Ireland as a missionary for Celtic Christianity which, at that time, was not the same as Catholic Christianity.

When he arrived in Ireland he started preaching in fields. He had a tremendous amount of opposition from Celtic chiefs and the Druids, especially the Druids. In spite of the demon-possessed Druids the Lord was with him and he began to have a tremendous amount of evangelistic success. He won literally thousands and thousands of people to Christ through the preaching of the gospel and he established hundreds of churches throughout Ireland. Later on many of these churches (most of them, not all of them) were infiltrated by the Roman Catholic church, but that was after his death.

The doctrinal teaching of Patrick has been said by many to be very similar to Protestant Christianity in nature. Actually, his teaching was very similar, not to Protestant teaching of the Reformation, but more like fundamentalist Christianity today.

Quoting from one of his chapters in his book: “I am a great debtor to God who has bestowed His grace so largely on me when multitudes were born again through my ministry.” Then he explains the multitude: “the Irish, who never had any knowledge of God and who worshipped only idols and unclean things, have lately become the people of the Lord and many of them are children of God.” To Patrick the Bible was the Word of God and nothing outside of the Bible was ever accepted as the Word of God.

He was one of those people whose ministry was distorted later by Romanism when they claimed him and made him a saint — the hypocrisy of Romanism because he was never even a Roman Catholic. One of the tragedies is that history gets distorted and people build legends out of the wrong thing.

Verse 10, “tormented them” with the teaching of the gospel; “tormented them” with Bible doctrine; “tormented them” with truth in three categories: establishment, gospel, and doctrine for the believer.

We begin with the conjunction kai, translated “And.” The substantive use of the articular present active participle katoikew. It is not translated like a verb, participles are also used as nouns. Instead of translating it, “two dwell” we translate it, “And the inhabitants,” plus the preposition epi plus the noun gh, “on the earth,” reference to the unbelievers and born-again believers who are living in the cosmic system. In other words, the people who are living in the cosmic system are going to produce the action. And what is the action? With the assassination of Moses and Elijah, two of the greatest doctrinal teachers of all time, they are going to rejoice, the present active indicative of the verb xairw. They are going to constantly rejoice. The futuristic present denotes an event which has not yet occurred but which is regarded as so certain that in thought it is regarded as already coming to pass. The active voice: the demonised people of the cosmic system, and that includes believers as well as unbelievers of the Tribulation, produce the action of the verb. This is a declarative indicative or a statement of fact. People celebrate when a good teacher of doctrine dies. That is the point. Of course, what kind of people celebrate is the issue: those who are Satan’s slaves, those who are involved in cosmic one and cosmic two.

The rejoicing is declared with a prepositional phrase, e)pi plus the locative of the intensive pronoun autos used as a personal pronoun, translated “over them,” “And the inhabitants of the earth will rejoice over them.” The dead bodies of Moses and Elijah lying in a street in Jerusalem, not lying in state.

Then we have another verb to tell how everyone feels, in fact two verbs. The present middle indicative of e)ufrainw which means to celebrate. They celebrate the death of Moses and Elijah. This is a pictorial present representing to the mind a picture of the event in the process of occurrence. The middle voice is a direct middle emphasising the agent as participating in the result. Everyone involved in the cosmic system, both believer and unbeliever, all over the world celebrates in a very special way the death of Moses and Elijah. They are celebrating for a reason, because they have finally been shut up!

As a result of this we have the devil’s Christmas, the future active indicative of the verb pempw which explains the exchange of gifts, “and they will send.” And with this the accusative singular direct object, dwron, “gifts,” just like Christmas. The future tense is a predictive future anticipating the devil’s Christmas toward the end of the Tribulation. The active voice: believers and unbelievers involved in the cosmic system produce the action of the verb.

Many, many people have a great deal of problem with the fact that the behaviour of Christians is often shocking to them and they try to explain it by saying that these people aren’t really believers. But they really are. There is nothing an unbeliever can do that a born-again believer in the cosmic system cannot do. So the idea of trying to explain away the salvation of some people by saying that they really didn’t believe in the first place is ludicrous. Let’s face the fact: there is no difference in the overt behaviour between a believer and an unbeliever in the cosmic system. They are always motivated by arrogance and whatever arrogance produces, they produce.

The indicative mood is declarative representing the verbal action from the viewpoint of reality, and they will send gifts. They celebrate during the entire time that these bodies are on display. The dative plural indirect object is from the reciprocal pronoun a)llhlon, and is correctly translated “to one another,” or “to each other.” That is literal, of course. There is a better way of translating it. The reciprocal pronoun, when used with a plural subject, represents as affected, of course, by the interchange of action, an opportunity for an idiom. The Greek idiom would be translated this way: “And the inhabitants of the earth [believers and unbelievers in the cosmic system] will gloat over them; they will both celebrate and exchange gifts.” This is the devil’s Christmas, great celebration, exchanging of gifts to commemorate the death of Moses and Elijah as the human heralds of the second advent. This is a gloating operation. They have been tormented by the great doctrinal messages, by the dynamic and Spirit-filled ministry of these two men. Obviously, the population of the earth who reject the ministry of these two men celebrate their death.

Whenever you are antagonistic toward someone and you resent them because they represent an attitude not your own, and they die, you have a chance to check your own virtue — privately, without anyone knowing anything about it. Every time you gloat over the death of someone whom you despise, someone who did not agree with you in any way, someone who has aroused your ire or antagonism, you have no virtue. Virtue and integrity do not gloat over anyone’s death. Furthermore, gloating, like most forms of antagonism, uses up a tremendous amount of energy, and when you utilise all of that energy you are just wearing out your own body. You’ll pay for it eventually, biologically as well as spiritually.

One of the signs of professionalism in any area is to be able to think clearly in the area of your profession, whether it is law or medicine or doctrinal teaching or whatever it is, without reacting to anyone or anything involved in your profession. The tremendous syphoning off of energy is a loss to your own personal ability.

Obviously the population of the earth who have rejected the ministry of these two men are celebrating what we have called “the devil’s Christmas.” The reason for it is because they have already assigned blame to Moses and Elijah for all of the problems that are occurring in the last half of the Tribulation, which is a time of historical disaster. It is the old story of blaming others for our problems. In reality, this is an avoidance of reality and this is how people become psychopathic, psychotic, sociopathic, disoriented to life. Obviously, then, for us as believers it is very detrimental to our life. We lose civilisation and the background for civilisation in virtue when we gloat over the death or the failure of enemies.

Often, of course, the blaming of others takes the form of gossiping. Gossiping is merely a by-product of arrogance. The person who gossips is so arrogant that he feels that he can talk about others’ sins, real or imagined, from the viewpoint of not being a sinner himself. Gossip is a sign of lack of virtue. Conspiracy is another form: blaming everyone’s bad decisions on some person or group. We make our own decisions. We make bad decisions; we make good decisions. We want to take credit for our good decisions but we want to blame someone else for our bad decisions. We must take credit for all of our decisions in order to stay oriented to life.

In this case we have a demonised population inside the cosmic system, and they have been brainwashed. They have therefore been going around ever since these two men have been teaching doctrine to the entire world and saying this is the “ME” [Moses and Elijah] conspiracy, and looking down their self-righteous noses and saying “we must get rid of the ME conspiracy. We are having problems because of the ME conspiracy,” etc. The ministry of Moses and Elijah by satellite has antagonised a large group of people in this world. And it doesn’t really have to be a large group, all it has to be is a loud group. Loud minorities cover the silent approbation of sane majorities. For those who reject their gospel message [which includes, by the way, the message of the baptism of fire] they will be very resentful, very implacable, very antagonistic, and they will assume that because these two men have finally been murdered that their message is now cancelled, and they don’t have to worry about hellfire in the future. And things are now going to get better because the cause of all of their problems has been eliminated, by prince Abaddon, the greatest hit man of history, they think. So the devil’s Christmas is the function primarily of gate one, cosmic one: arrogance, vanity, jealousy, bitterness, self-righteousness, a false sense of destiny, and a guilt complex.

The devil’s Christmas is based on cosmic involvement, which means two categories of demonisation: in a few cases demon possession, but in all cases demon influence. The thinking is influenced so that we have the human race tragic flaw of assuming that once you kill those who teach the truth, you cancel the truth. Somehow the truth will stop. It never does, it rolls right on. The devil’s Christmas, then, is one of the greatest manifestations of arrogance in the human race, and such arrogance is self-destructive. Only the fact that Jesus Christ controls history keeps the human race intact to finish its destiny and resolve the angelic conflict by the end of history, the Gog revolution. The arrogance which results from negative volition toward doctrine produces a very temporary false hope as the wrong reason for celebrating. Furthermore, the fact that the majority of the earth’s population join in the celebration does not provide any basis for security. The principle is generally true, almost always true, when applied to a situation like this: the majority is never right. The majority is usually the non-thinking part of the population, those who are easily duped, that part of the population of the world that is conned easily. And there is no security in majority decision based on demonisation, based on arrogance in the cosmic system. So obviously the devil’s Christmas is going to be very short-lived, for it will terminate in the baptism of fire which follows the second advent of Christ. In fact, many of the local celebrities and those who are celebrating in Jerusalem will be destroyed by an earthquake which is coming up in verse 13. There will be a personal answer from the Lord almost immediately.

The basic reason for the devil’s Christmas is given, beginning with a causal conjunction, o(ti in the Greek, correctly translated “because.” With this we have a subject made up of three words: an immediate demonstrative pronoun translated “these,” an indeclinable numeral translated “two,” and the noun profhth, meaning a communicator of truth, “because these two prophets”. This is why they are celebrating, this is why the devil’s Christmas, this is why they are exchanging gifts, this is why they suddenly assume their troubles are over. Simple-minded people are always disappointed in life. Why? Because they always see from their simple viewpoint what is wrong with the world, and once it is eliminated they assume that everything will be all right. They are called stupid optimists. But it never is all right. Simple-minded people never understand man’s old sin nature and they never understand the total depravity of man as a doctrine. Therefore they always assume that once you kill off a couple of people or a group that they associate with the problems of the world that everything is going to be all right. And, furthermore, when people try to solve the problems of life by violence they introduce greater problems than heretofore existed.

Why were they celebrating? The verb is the aorist active indicative of basanizw and it means to torment, “because these two prophets had tormented.” The culminative aorist tense views the ministry of Elijah and Moses and their messages in its entirety but regards it from the viewpoint of existing results. Where people did not respond positively by accepting Christ, or believers did not respond in a positive way to their doctrinal teaching, they reacted. The instant reaction to truth when you hear it is torment of soul, and no one like to be tortured in their soul. This is why people are so extremely arrogant and antagonistic when they reject Bible doctrine as believers. They’re tormented in their souls. The active voice: the ministry of Moses and Elijah has produced the action of tormenting, by teaching the truth, the souls of unbelievers. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of this reaction, the reality of negative reaction to the truth, establishment truth, gospel truth, doctrinal truth for believers. The accusative plural direct object from the articular present active participle, again, katoikew, “the inhabitants of the earth.

Translation of verse 10: “And the inhabitants of the earth [mankind in the cosmic system] will gloat over them [the death of Moses and Elijah]; they will both celebrate and exchange gifts because these two prophets had tormented the inhabitants of the earth.”

The same satellite communications system which disseminated the messages of Moses and Elijah now depicts their death through the news media. And not only their death but their desecration. They are constantly televised in terms of their bodies, their corpses in the streets. The warning of the second advent, the warning of eternal judgment for those who reject Christ, the warning of the baptism of fire which will follow the second advent, produced a tremendous amount of fear of punishment. Furthermore, it did something else. People who are negative toward truth inevitably do not want to think about death. They build up in their minds a mental block where death is completely removed from their thinking. They live their life in the reality of living but never in the reality of the inevitability of death. Therefore, when a message or a messenger comes along and intrudes into their thinking with the reality of death and eternal judgment for those who reject Christ, it is more than they can stand, because in effect truth rips away this tremendous mental block by which people live in the present and never think of what is going to happen in the eternal future. And once you rip away the mental block that has made them appear to be very civilised people, the civilisation and the restraints of civilisation are gone. They are totally barbaric. All barbaric festivals involve someone being slaughtered or sacrificed. Barbaric festivals of the past: human sacrifice. In effect this devil’s Christmas is a barbaric festival.

The two people who have ripped away the facade and destroyed the mental blocks about the future are now dead, and the population assumes that with the death of these people that they can recover the mental blocks and start living in the present. And they do live in the present and they do the very normal thing in the present: they celebrate, they exchange gifts. They have the devil’s Christmas. But the death of Moses and Elijah, therefore, appears to nullify their message. They no longer fear the wrath of God because the messengers of God are dead, and there are their corpses in the street and every day they want to see more and more film on those two corpses. You see, they’re dead, they have no power, their message was not true. We can now go back and live in the present, is what they think. We can forget about death and eternal judgment. They again recover, partly, their mental blocks about the future. And how do they do it? Arrogance. Arrogance reasserts itself. All mental blocks in life must be directly related to the amount of arrogance in the soul of the person who has them. Even though the two heralds have died there is failure to realise that their message will go on, for what they do in these three and a half days of the devil’s Christmas by celebrating is that they re-establish their mental blocks. In other words, we call it putting scar tissue on the soul. They block out the dynamic message that if you don’t believe in Christ you are going to spend eternity in the lake of fire. Even though these two men have died their message will go on, death cannot destroy the power of truth, the power of the Word of God.

But for the moment the devil’s Christmas and the wild celebration obscures reality, and they must so celebrate as to ignore reality. Actually the world goes mad. When people sit down at the TV sets and gloat over a couple of corpses, and go out and celebrate over a couple of corpses, you go right back to barbarism. From the point of this great celebration, the devil’s Christmas, the world goes into the greatest era of barbarism it has ever known. Cultured people overnight become barbarians. People with a veneer of virtue from establishment lose it, and the horrible things that man does to man in the rest of the book of Revelation go right back to this hour of the devil’s Christmas. They are tormented, and when they get temporary relief from their torment from the convicting ministry of God the Holy Spirit, when they can celebrate, when they can forget the reality of those messages and go back to the reality of living in the present, living life in terms of pleasure. They will remove all of the restraints they previously had. This fulfils our Lord’s message on “the latter state is worse than the first.”

The demonised numbers of the human race living in the cosmic system assume erroneously that by killing off the messengers everything is going to be all right, that the death of the messenger cancels the message. But the death of the messenger never cancels the message. The message will continue right down to the moment of the second advent and the silencing of the prophets does not nullify the message, it advances God’s plan for the rest of the Tribulation. For apart from God’s permission Abaddon could not have assassinated Moses and Elijah. Their assassination is a part of the plan and the celebration. The exchanging of gifts which characterises the devil’s Christmas will be no comfort when these people face our Lord in judgment and when they face the reality of what is about to occur. They celebrate but when the celebration is over the people with whom they celebrate are going to be strangers to them, for what that celebration did was to create monsters out of the people involved. There is going to be more murder, more rape, more violence, more stealing, because after three and a half days of celebration bringing them back to their own little world of the present moment they are going to come back as barbarians. Actually, what we are going to see is a total schizophrenic change in the population of the world. People who were exchanging gifts yesterday are going to exchange violence when it is over.

And they did it to themselves. Many of these people are going to die after the devil’s Christmas horribly. They are going to die before the second advent. They are going to see the results of their own folly. They are going to see what happens when you reject one portion of truth, for when you reject one portion of truth you reject truth en tote. If you reject establishment you are going to reject the gospel; if you reject the gospel you will reject establishment. Once you have no respect for the law you are lawless, you are a barbarian. We make monsters out of ourselves. Remember that all sin comes from our volition, not from the sin nature. The sin nature can only make a suggestion, it can only tempt.

There is a principle that comes out of this that we can use right now. When people derive their pleasure and their happiness from the misfortune of others, today they have no happiness, tomorrow they have disaster. Gloating over the adversities and the tragedies of others is the sign of today’s misery and tomorrow’s insecurity, for all capacity for life and happiness is based on truth, doctrine in its three categories.

These celebrating people have rejected doctrine which is their only source of happiness and their only hope for eternal life. Furthermore, they have rejected doctrine from the two most eloquent speakers who ever lived. They have rejected the doctrine presented in great power. These people who celebrate the devil’s Christmas preferred a few days of celebrating to a life of blessing and eternity of blessing beyond their imagination. Without Bible doctrine it is impossible to understand historical trends and they have totally miscalculated and, therefore, they have become the last disaster before the Millennium.

In verses 11 and 12 we note the sudden termination of the devil’s Christmas.

Verse 11 begins with the connective conjunction kai, translated “and.” Immediately following is a prepositional phrase meta plus the accusative of the extent of time. A number of words which are all in the accusative follow: the accusative of the extent of time h(mera, meaning “day”; the indeclinable numeral meaning “three”; and the accusative neuter singular h(misuj, which all simply adds up to “after three and a half days.”

The next word becomes very important, not only because of its meaning in this passage but because of its significance in understanding the whole realm of doctrine, and in order to set aside one of the greatest arrogances of history. Arrogance is the foundation for every form of evil and one of the great evils of our time is the idea that man has the ability to create life.

“the Spirit of life” as it is translated in the King James version is the nominative singular subject from pneuma. Sometimes the word means “spirit” but its original meaning is “breath,” the breath, the air of life, plus the possessive genitive of zwh, “life.” Those two words tell us the origin of life. There is no life in the womb, never has been and never will be, the concept is one of the greatest arrogances of all history. Man does not create life and, of course, copulation does not produce life. Pregnancy is not life and there is no life in the three embryonic stages in the womb. God gives life in every individual case. The woman who thinks that she carries life in her womb is suffering from terrible arrogance. There is no life in the womb and the beginning of humility and understanding of life is the fact that God imputes life to every person after the embryo emerges from the womb. God imputes life, and with that doctrine goes the fact that God has a purpose for every life, regardless of the genetic problems or accidents or happy combinations of genes that form the individual. God has a purpose in imputing life to that combination of genes, be it fortunate or unfortunate. This helps to understand the tragedies of children who die at a very early age with some form of disease, a vulnerability which came through genetics, and it helps to understand that God’s purpose for that life terminated at that point, and to become bitter about God’s purpose is to have a life of total misery.

Now here are two bodies lying in the streets of Jerusalem. These two were once embryos and then they emerged from the womb. God imputed life after birth to Moses and Elijah. When life is imputed it is imputed not to the body but to the format soul, and that soul, once it receives human life causes man to become a living soul. Until then he is a dead soul in the sense of s format soul. That soul is inside the body, and when the soul leaves the body, with that human life in it, that person is dead.

Moses and Elijah were in their interim bodies. They had both departed from this life under unusual circumstances. They left their interim bodies and moved back down and took their physical bodies. This is not resurrection, this is resuscitation. The soul and the spirit of Moses rejoined his body and the same was true of Elijah. Then they had their fantastic ministry which covered the better part of the last half of the Tribulation. When their ministry was finished Abaddon assassinated them and the soul and the spirit left the body in each case, went back to heaven and rejoined their interim bodies, and they again had the great period of interim happiness which belongs to all believers.

Those bodies were in the streets for three and a half days. They were empty. And once again they returned and the breath of life functioned in those bodies. So we read: “And after three and a half days the breath of life,” referring to the origin of life. Life is never formed in the womb. Note that when they returned and were resuscitated, they didn’t start out as embryos in a womb. Life is the monopoly of God.

Next we have a prepositional phrase, e)k plus the ablative of source from qeoj, “from God,” “And after three and a half days the breath of life from God.” The ablative of source implies that the original situation contributed to the present character or state. The original situation is not the Greek word sperma, or the word bioj, it is the Greek word qeoj, “God.” Life is from God.

Then we have the aorist active indicative of e)iserxomai, “entered into,” “the breath of life from God entered into.” And then one more prepositional phrase, e)n plus the locative plural of a)utoj, “into them.” Please notice the breath of life from God enters into, is not formed in, the womb. The constative aorist tense contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety. The constative aorist refers to a momentary action which causes the resuscitation of the two human heralds. Resurrection means to have a permanent body which you will have forever and ever. The only resurrection body in existence right at this moment is our Lord’s in heaven. There is no other person resurrected. Resuscitation means to come back into the body of corruption and to subsequently die, like Lazarus. So we have the constative aorist referring to a momentary action which causes the resuscitation of the two heralds. The active voice: the breath of life from God produces the action of the verb. It is the spark of life. The indicative mood is declarative for a dogmatic statement of future history. The translation: “And after three and a half days the breath of life from God entered into them,” resuscitation.

Then we have a sequential use of the conjunction kai this time, translated “then.” with the aorist active indicative of the verb I(sthmi which we are going to see several times in these two chapters. I(sthmi means a number of things. As a transitive verb it means to stand, or something similar to that; as an intransitive verb it means to take a stand. We are dealing with the transitive use.

The aorist tense is a constative aorist, it contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety. Everyone was gloating one day and then three and a half days afterward all of a sudden Moses and Elijah stood up and smiled at them! Can you imagine the shock? When the Lord put the breath of life back in them they just simply got up. The active voice: the two witnesses produce the action. The indicative mood is declarative for a dogmatic statement of fact. And it even tells us “they stood on their own feet,” e)pi plus the accusative from the noun pouj, “feet.” This, again, is resuscitation, not resurrection. Resuscitation is the restoration of human life in the physical body of corruption in contrast to resurrection which is life in the resurrection body forever. The resurrection body is not subject to death. Moses and Elijah, the human heralds of the second advent, will not receive their resurrection bodies until the second advent of Christ.

The second result of resuscitation begins with the connective use of the conjunction kai, “and.” Then we have a subject made up of two words. This is the second result and it is followed instantly. We have the adjective megaj and the noun foboj in the nominative case, “and great fear.” This is the second result. Fear is characteristic of demonisation. People in the cosmic system, both believers and unbelievers, are subject to fear. A believer can be courageous one day and if he starts living in the cosmic system he has a personality change and becomes frightened. So fear is characteristic of residence and function in the cosmic system. Fear is also a total disorientation to life, and that means for the believer a total disorientation to the plan of God. Fear is arrogant and emotional subjectivity. Fear is inability to think under pressure, the normal reaction to pressure in the cosmic state. On the other hand, courage is the ability to think under pressure; fear is the failure to think under that same pressure. Confidence toward God is motivating virtue — gate five of the divine dynasphere, while courage toward man and circumstances is the functional virtue of gate six of the divine dynasphere. Fear is a motivational evil, then, of the cosmic system. Cowardice is the function of that fear under pressure. Mankind in the cosmic system fears the truth of Bible doctrine in all three categories and, of course, man in the cosmic system fears the circumstances of life, whether it be death, disease, or disaster, the three “D’s” that are usually associated with disaster. Fear in contemplation of these things is often called worry. Worry is the anticipation; fear is the actuality. Fear in our Bible study means loss of a personal sense of destiny. Our personal sense of destiny comes from perception and application of Bible doctrine.

The resuscitation, then, of the two heralds, Moses and Elijah, causes fear of them, fear of historical trends, fear of their eternal future; and with the resuscitation of Moses and Elijah the devil’s Christmas comes to a screeching halt. In other words, the party’s over. For three and a half days they have celebrated the devil’s Christmas with gloating but their pleasure and their partying does not sustain them now. Now they have pressure on them and all of the fun that they had does not sustain.

The principle is very obvious: your pleasures and your fun will not sustain you in any form of adversity. Pleasure has no sustaining power under pressure. Pleasure is a temporary stimulus not to be confused with happiness. Happy people can indulge in pleasure but this is not what we are discussing here.

Three and a half days of celebration provided no strength for the future, no virtue, no honour, no courage. Nothing during the course of the three and a half day party throughout the world prepares these people for what now occurs.

“and great fear,” then we have a verb, the aorist active indicative of the verb e)pipiptw which means to fall upon, “great fear fell on them.” The culminative aorist tense views fear in its entirety but regards it from the viewpoint of existing results, inability to cope with these unusual circumstances, the resuscitation of the two witnesses. The active voice: the great fear produces the action of the verb. The indicative mood is declarative representing a result, a verbal action, on the viewpoint of reality. The accusative singular articular present active participle of qeorew means to view, “those who were viewing them.” The definite article, by the way, is used as a personal pronoun for people throughout the world who are watching on television, gloating, and those who are personally observing, walking by at the time. The present tense is a progressive present for action in a state of progress. The entire world was watching and the media were giving everyone a chance to gloat over the desecration of these two bodies. The active voice: the entire population of the world produces the action of the verb, and the participle is circumstantial.

Translation of verse 11: “ And after three and a half days the breath of life from God entered into them [resuscitation]. Then they stood on their feet, and great fear fell on those who were viewing [observing] them.”

Verse 12: the third result of their resuscitation. This result deals with Moses and Elijah. We have the connective conjunction kai followed by the aorist active indicative of a)kouw, which means to hear. Everyone is either seeing or being afraid or hearing. With these two it is hearing. The constative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety. The active voice: Moses and Elijah only heard this command. The indicative mood is declarative for a simple statement of fact.

With this the objective genitive singular from two words. What they heard was megaj again, this time it isn’t fear, and the noun fonh, “great voice,” “And they [the two heralds] heard a loud voice.”

The source of the voice: e)k plus the ablative of o)uranoj, “from heaven,” and the present active participle legw, “saying.” The futuristic present tense denotes the event which has not yet occurred but is regarded as so certain that in thought it is contemplated as already coming to pass. The active voice: God produces the action. The participle is circumstantial. We have a dative plural indirect object referring to Moses and Elijah, and again we have a)utoj which is the intensive pronoun used as the personal pronoun, and it is translated “them,” “saying to them.” The dative of indirect object indicates the ones in whose interest the mandate is given. The mandate is now given: the aorist active imperative of a)nabainw which means simply “come up.” And with it the adverb of place, o(de which is translated “here.” The aorist tense is a constative aorist, it means “come now.” The two heralds will produce the action and this is an imperative of command. Obviously they have the ability at that moment to move out of sight.

Their obedience is then mentioned, the aorist active indicative of a)nabainw. The aorist tense is a culminative aorist this time, however, because it views the ascension or the departure of the two heralds in its entirety but regards it from the viewpoint of existing results, a permanent change of station for Moses and Elijah. They have now completed their work in the human body. Moses and Elijah, two great prophets who never finished their work during their first tour of duty on earth: Moses did not complete his work because he did not lead the Jews into the land and was replaced by Joshua; Elijah did not complete his work because he ran away at the peak of the great revival in the northern kingdom, and he did not learn the lesson of the cave in 1 Kings 19. He was replaced by Elisha. So it is fitting and compatible with God’s grace policy that these two great prophets should return to earth and complete their mission in the most difficult period of all human history, the time of greatest disaster, the time of the eschatology of the devil’s desperation. The active voice: Moses and Elijah produce the action. The indicative mood is declarative indicating the fact that they obeyed implicitly the mandate.

Their departure is in a very special vehicle, e)n plus the locative of nefele, a special cloud designed to take them out. This parallels our Lord’s ascension, the only difference being that our Lord was in a resurrection body. This cloud takes them back in their physical bodies, they are transferring to heaven where they will receive their interim bodies.

Note the concentration of those who were antagonistic, who are called “their enemies.” We have the connective kai, translated “and,” or “while” in this case, plus the nominative plural subject from e)xqroj, “while their enemies.” Now, of course, their enemies are viewing them, qeorew again in the aorist active indicative.

Translation of verse 12: “Then they [the two heralds of the second advent, Moses and Elijah] heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, Come up here. And so they went up to heaven in a cloud; while their enemies [negative volition toward their ministry] observed them.”

The principle: Those who reject the teaching of truth or doctrine in any dispensation are the enemies. Rejection of doctrine always produces antagonism. Negative volition makes the person who has it an enemy of the truth, and therefore an enemy of the communicator of the truth, Moses and Elijah in this case. Hence, those who have rejected their doctrine, believer and unbeliever, are said to be enemies. There is no record of any of these millions of viewers changing their minds, and that it a point of great significance. They had been watching a miracle. They had been gloating over the death of Moses and Elijah for three and a half days, they were watching a miracle. The doctrine which Moses and Elijah had been teaching for the last half of the Tribulation was far more dynamic than any miracle. Now they see a phenomenal miracle, resuscitation. They were negative at the point of doctrine; they remain negative at the point of the miracle. Negative volition is consistent and it also demonstrates another fact: miracles change nothing, it is truth that changes people. People who reject truth will reject miracles from the truth. Miracles in themselves are meaningless, they change nothing. The population’s persistent rejection of the message resulted in scar tissue of the soul. Miracles never change scar tissue, only truth can change scar tissue. People develop scar tissue through negative volition toward the truth; people lose scar tissue by positive volition toward the truth, truth in all categories.

Any scar tissue that is developed can only be changed by going from negative to positive volition. So what is the issue? The issue is volition. Miracles are not an issue and you never lose any scar tissue by seeing a miracle. Miracles make no difference; doctrine makes the difference. If you do not accept the message the miracle will not change your mind, for the power is in the message, not in the miracle.

We have learned that an arrogant society inevitably becomes a degenerate society. Arrogance always destroys the concept of what we might call “selectivity.” Always a few people succeed in any particular generation and the rest do not succeed. Success is always limited to a few no matter what the field happens to be. Obviously Bible doctrine is designed for the happiness of all but attainment and success, no matter by what standard it is measured, always emphasises the few who do it.

In a society of virtue and integrity, and therefore humility, the emphasis is always on the few: their success, their standards, their hard work, the means by which they reach attainment in whatever profession or business or activity in which they entered. Once the society becomes arrogant, because the society benefits from the success from the few, then the emphasis goes back to the masses, the “dignity” of being lazy, loss of integrity. And as the emphasis goes back to the masses eventually the glorification of the masses leads to economic destruction and social degeneration. The stupidity of the masses eventuates in war. Once social degeneration and economic declension begins it is inevitable that the masses will then put pressure upon whatever government they have.

The masses regard the success of the few as a challenge to their security. When the masses are glorified then inevitably you have redistribution of wealth, the welfare state and socialism, and the thing that breaks a nation (It broke Rome three times) is trying to feed the masses. The welfare state is the second stage of historical degeneration. Lack of class, lack of good taste in almost any field, lack of honour, lack of virtue, is simply once again a recognition of the terrible degeneracy which now exists in this country. The decline of good music: Punk rock, any kind of rock. That isn’t music and those people aren’t even musicians, is an example of the things that the masses without any norms or standards go for. You could see it beginning a long time ago through culture, you could see it through spiritual life, you could see it in “religion” (not Christianity), you could see it in almost every factor. And, of course, it reflects itself in economic disaster.

We noted in verse twelve of this chapter that the person who rejects the message of doctrine is never impressed by miracles. And we have also learned a principle: miracles never change anything, miracles have no permanent results in life, and miracles do not even impress those who have rejected doctrine. The only thing that is permanent and meaningful in life is Bible doctrine, the truth.

In verses 13 and 14 we have the first conclusion in this chapter, the divine judgment of the devil’s Christmas. It is fitting that it should be mentioned in terms of an earthquake because natural disaster always causes people to think. Even if they go back to their old ways and do not learn from that disaster, at least it gets their attention. Earthquakes are always a warning of great natural disaster. Natural disaster will get the attention of these people where miracles had absolutely no effect. The person who will not accept the simplest of truths will never be impressed or changed by miracles.

Here is a fascinating thing. These people were absolutely indifferent to the tremendous miracles that they had witnessed during the ministry of the two men, Moses and Elijah, the heralds of the second advent. But as soon as they get into disaster then God has their attention. Disaster causes a temporary slowing down of negative volition and gives options to those involved to switch from negative to positive.

The connective kai begins the verse, correctly translated “and.” With it we have a prepositional phrase, e)n plus the locative of the remote demonstrative pronoun ekeinoj, and plus the noun w(ra, “in that hour.” The remote demonstrative is used to differentiate things already named from others. In other words, it is used here for a period of time ascertained from the context. Here these people had had first of all the greatest opportunity of a lifetime, truth from Moses and Elijah. From that truth they said no, negative. That truth was accompanied by great miracles. Miracles were meaningless and merely strengthened negative volition and caused these people to say, So what! The only person who is impressed by a miracle is a person who is positive toward the truth.

Truth and miracles combined cause nothing but negative volition in degenerate society, but historical disaster caused this negative volition to pause, and the option now opens in historical disaster. For those who are the strongest of negatives, who have greatest influence on others, historical disaster wipes them out. In the city of Jerusalem we have noted that group. So the option is always there in historical disaster and generally speaking most people who have been negative in the face of truth, in the face of miracles, are also negative in the face of historical disaster.

We have the beginning of a verb form here in order to show what occurred, the aorist middle indicative of the verb ginomai, translated “there was.” The constative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety. It takes the earthquake and regardless of its duration gathers it up into one entity, one great disaster right there in the city of Jerusalem. This is a middle voice but it is a deponent verb, middle in form, active in meaning. It is the earthquake that produces the action. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of an option from disaster. Disaster always has meaning and purpose whether it is in our lives as individuals or whether it is collective and therefore described as historical. Any time we face disaster God is giving us opportunity to pay attention to something in life that we have ignored through normal channels, the teaching of truth. “And in that hour there was a great earthquake.” This is a predicate nominative, the verb to be always takes the predicate nominative. We have the adjective megaj for “great,” and seismoj for “earthquake.”

This is, of course, a fitting end to the devil’s Christmas in Jerusalem. The great earthquake was divine judgment obviously on negative volition, but also it was a warning, it gave a last option for many. Elijah was the great evangelist, Moses was the great Bible teacher, and the earthquake in Jerusalem emphasises the reality of judgment of those who reject Christ as saviour. Earthquakes, like any type of natural disaster, always remind us that it is time to face reality. Arrogance removes a person from the reality of his situation, and as arrogance moves us away various types of suffering, including personal disaster and historical disaster, come along to remind us that we must get back to reality and face reality with truth. For the believer it is Bible doctrine; for the unbeliever it is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; for the masses of people it is the laws of divine establishment. All of these things must be put together. It is imperative, therefore, that we get back to reality. That is what disaster is all about.

Note what arrogance does in disaster. In personal disaster the arrogant person blames others in his periphery; he blames someone else. In historical disaster the news media blame whomever they dislike. This is always the way it is and always the way it will be.

The earthquake, then, is so designed, as any historical disaster, with two things in mind: to punish and to eliminate from society those who are negative to truth, so that society and life and history can be perpetuated; it is also designed to bless and deliver those who are involved in truth, those who are positive to doctrine. For example, in Matthew 24:7 “earthquake” used as a sign if the second advent was a warning, the last great evangelistic appeal before Christ returns to the people of the Tribulation: “look, you still have a chance to be saved.” Here is historical disaster in terms of earthquakes. Or other historical disasters, same verse: “nation shall rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be economic depression and earthquakes.” All of these things are to bring people back to reality. If you won’t face reality under normal circumstances then you will have to face abnormal circumstances, you are going to have to hurt, suffer, come face to face with an issue. In Revelation 11:19 earthquakes signify the second advent of Christ as a warning to the population. The same thing is true in Zechariah 14:5. These thing are not merely for punishment; these things are always a warning. Even while man is being punished for his rejection of truth he is being warned and given options, producing a principle: as long as there is life there is hope. You can always turn things around but it must be your decision and it must come from your volition.

In that hour, then, there was a great earthquake. Just as the resurrection of Christ was accompanied by great earthquakes so the death and resuscitation of Moses and Elijah is accompanied by a great earthquake. As in the case of an earthquake which split the Mount of Olives a short time after this one, earthquake is a blessing to those who make decisions from a position of strength. The earthquake, by the way, also produces local terror. People can approach all disasters from the standpoint of knowledge or the standpoint of ignorance. Whenever we face any kind of a personal problem in our lives we either approach it from knowledge or from ignorance. Knowledge comes from doctrine. You can know doctrine and face any kind of suffering, any kind of disaster, and handle it magnificently because the power in your life is the truth in the right lobe. But if you approach that thing from ignorance you suffer both in the soul and physically in the body as well.

Now it says a tenth of the city fell. The aorist active indicative of piptw indicates that great and beautiful buildings, things that people had spent a great deal of time in investment and construction, were destroyed. One tenth of the city became rubble and this will form the great fortification in the Armageddon campaign. “And in that hour there was a great earthquake and one tenth of the city fell.”

The casualty list is mentioned next. Literally, it says in the Greek, “and the names of men, seven thousand.” It is an idiom and should be translated, “also seven thousand people were killed,” the aorist passive indicative of a)pokteinw. We know something about these seven thousand. They were the ones who had the most scar tissue of the soul and would never change. These would never be impressed by anything but their own emotions, their own feelings, their own life. Therefore, these seven thousand were a millstone hanging around the neck of Jerusalem which very shortly would be under siege. And they were removed because they would have an adverse effect on the defence of Jerusalem in the great attack from the king of the north. The constative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety. God knew every one of these seven thousand people. He personally imputed human life to the soul of each one of these people. God had a purpose for each one of the seven thousand but they failed. So seven thousand received (the passive voice) death. In the passive voice in the Greek the subject receives the action of the verb. They received it, they were passed any hope, they had made their last bad decision from a position of weakness. They had enjoyed the devil’s Christmas, they had lived it up, they had had a marvellous time on that occasion. Now it is over. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of this death list, and it occurred, as it says, in the earthquake.

There is always a positive result because disaster is not designed to put man down or to destroy man on the earth, disaster is designed to benefit man. Man can only stand so much prosperity and then he has to have disaster to be benefited. Many people learn from disaster, “and the rest,” the nominative plural subject of loipoj, the “survivors,” “became,” again the aorist active indicative of ginomai. This is a culminative aorist, however, it views the disaster in its entirety but regards it from the viewpoint of existing results. Fear or terror became the motivation for many people coming back to reality. People can actually be frightened into facing reality. The active voice: the survivors of the earthquake in that section of Jerusalem produce the action. The indicative mood is declarative for the fact that the survivors were motivated by terror.

And so we have the predicate nominative of e)mfoboj, “terrified,” “and the survivors became terrified.” By producing local terror the earthquake as a natural disaster resulted in positive volition. Some unbelievers were converted; some believers actually got out of the cosmic system. This, of course, means there was benefit.

But here is the tragic thing. The believers living in Jerusalem at that time had two of the greatest communicators of all time. They could hear Moses as believers, and Elijah. No matter how great the public speakers, and these two were the most dynamic, they were teaching truth, doctrine, doctrine, believers were distracted and lost control of their lives. They made numerous decisions from a position of weakness, and therefore got into the cosmic system. They wouldn’t learn from truth and there is only one other way to learn, the hard way. Basically then, you can learn through doctrine or you can learn through disaster.

In time of great historical disaster often a nation will come to a point of great revival. What pulls a nation back together is the spiritual factor, Bible doctrine. Disaster tends to destroy fantasising, it blows up dream castles, and it causes one to see the weakness of his own personal arrogance. So a principle emerges: Disaster and resultant fear temporarily cancels out the distractions of arrogance. The “terror” mentioned here puts them into a position of forced humility, and from that position of enforced humility they start making right decisions. From enforced humility comes teachability to those who through arrogance had no teachability. Therefore disaster becomes terror and terror becomes the means of enforced humility. And, of course, enforced humility results, as in this case, in some responding to the gospel, responding to truth. In other words, disaster brings people to the end of self and it clears the way for facing the issue of the gospel.

Before many of the people in Jerusalem could respond to the message that they had actually heard from the two witnesses they had to come to the end of self in a dramatic way. The terrors and the horrors of the natural disaster, and the resultant destruction of the temporary security which they had built up over three and a half days of the devil’s Christmas, was replaced by a fear that produced an enforced humility and teachability. This is why at the end of the verse they gave glory to God, the aorist active indicative of didomi, and didomi here means volition is behind this. The culminative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety, it regards it from the viewpoint of existing results, the conversion of many people through historical disaster. The active voice: the people of Jerusalem who in a state of terror were reduced to enforced humility which temporarily set aside their arrogance were free to respond to the gospel, and they did. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of giving glory to God as the manifestation of enforced humility through historical disaster.

“and they gave glory to God,” the dative singular indirect object of qeoj. They had heard the message and had been irritated by it. So they “gave glory to the God of heaven.” They were able to link the message that irritated them with the resuscitation of the two witnesses and their departure into heaven, and they called Him “the God of heaven.”

This is not the same as giving glory in worship. Giving glory in worship is the worship of the mature believer in the resurrection body. It goes with the uniform of glory and wearing the order of the morning star after the judgment seat of Christ. You cannot give to God what you do not have. So these are not believers giving glory to God, these are unbelievers accepting Christ as saviour. So here, giving glory to the God of heaven is the expression of the enforced humility, not of worship. This is a way of describing the fact that this disaster which killed many was also profitable for many for they personally believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and received Him as their saviour.

We now have a transitional verse 14 which is the woe count. The word for “woe” is taken from Greek drama, o)uai. We have the interjection ouai used as a substitute to denote calamity or great disaster. The adjective deuteroj which goes with it tells us that this is the second one. We have seen already two categories of disaster. We have seen spiritual disaster, historical disaster in the field of social degeneration, economic disaster, and warfare on the horizon. “The second woe” is the corrected translation. With this is the aorist active indicative of a)perxomai, and it means to go away and depart and is better translated, “has passed.” The dramatic aorist tense states a present reality with the certitude of a past event. The active voice: the second woe or the sixth trumpet produces the action of the verb. We have finished with it now. We studied the sixth trumpet or the second woe in Revelation 9:13-21, and this is another way of telling us that what we have been examining is parenthetical to prepare us for the eschatology of the devil’s desperation. The indicative mood is declarative representing the verbal idea from the viewpoint of reality, “The second woe has passed.” Coming up is the third woe which will be the greatest period of concentrated disaster in all of human history.

We have a demonstrative particle to go with it, the dramatic particle idou and this is also taken from drama. With idou it means that something is now going to come up that is even worse, and it is described under the numeral used as an adjective, tritoj, “the third.” The third is the worst of all, “Behold, the third woe comes.” We change from the aorist tense to the present active indicative, and not a)perxomai but the simple verb e)rxomai. The futuristic present denotes an action which is about to take place in sequence with the first two woes and is even worse as far as disaster is concerned. The active voice: the third woe produces the action. The indicative mood is declarative for a simple statement of fact, and that isn’t enough just to put the verb in so we have an adverb to go with it to intensify it, taxu which means quickly, in a short time, soon. An adverb and a verb together in this particular sequence indicates something far worse is about to occur.

Woe, of course, anticipates great catastrophe. Hence, it becomes the eschatology of the devil’s desperation. The three woes are synonymous with the last three trumpets (5,6,7) except that the seventh trumpet is only the beginning event of the third woe. The third woe is the entire eschatology of the devil’s desperation. It starts with the seventh trumpet, the expulsion of Satan from heaven, and it ends with the second advent. Therefore the woe count is very important at this point. “The second woe is past; behold, the third woe follows soon.”

The third woe, or the eschatology of the devil’s desperation

1. It begins with the seventh trumpet or the greatest of all Jewish holocausts. The greatest wave of anti-Semitism in all of history will occur in the last half of the Tribulation. It is the first event to follow the expulsion of Satan from heaven. We will study it in Revelation chapter twelve.

2. The devil has two witnesses. His demon attacks fail so he must go back to human beings and he has two men that he has selected who are to become dictators and he will try to rule, to control, to destroy through them. The devil’s two dictators: Revelation chapter thirteen, the Gentile dictator in verses 1-10; in verses 11-18, the Jewish dictator. Just as God sent Moses and Elijah, so the devil has two special leaders.

3. The perpetuation of evangelism during the time of the eschatology of the devil’s desperation — Revelation chapter fourteen. One thing that is always the solution to life is truth. Bible doctrine is truth, and truth will continue in the most desperate period of all human history.

4. Divine judgment will also continue. Divine judgment is designed to be a blessing to those people who have a volition which will respond to disaster when it will not respond to anything else. Therefore, we have divine judgment during the period of the devil’s desperation, Revelation chapters fifteen and sixteen. In chapter fifteen it is called the seven last plagues and it is exactly the same as chapter sixteen where it they are called the seven vials (drinking goblets).

5. We have Satan’s last desperate attack on the human race and when everything else has failed there is the attack of religion. Religion is the most powerful of all Satan’s attacks. It is the last desperate attack on the human race and it will come in the form of ecumenical religion in the Tribulation, Revelation chapters seventeen and eighteen. In chapter seventeen we have the function of ecumenical religion; in chapter eighteen we have the judgment of ecumenical religion.

6. The termination of the eschatology of the devil’s desperation, Revelation chapters nineteen and twenty: the second advent of Christ in chapter nineteen; the judgment of Satan in chapter twenty.

We move on now to a new subject: the seventh trumpet, which is only a part of the third woe. At this point we have an outline because the seventh trumpet goes from 11:15 to 12:17.

Revelation 11:15-19 — the anticipation of the Millennial reign of Christ.

Revelation 12:1-11 — the back ground for the seventh trumpet.

Revelation 12:12-17 — the seventh trumpet itself.

We begin now with the anticipation of the Millennial reign of Christ. We begin verse 15 with a temporal kai which is an Attic Greek concept. It is translated “when”. Next we have the nominative singular subject from an adjective numeral, e)bdomoj, and it means seventh. With it is the noun aggeloj, taking us back to the angelic order of heralds. It refers to a pur sui vant angel, “When the seventh angel.”

Next comes the aorist active indicative of the verb salpizw and it means to sound a trumpet, “When the seventh angel had sounded his trumpet.” The constative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety. It really hasn’t begun yet, but when it does certain things will happen. The active voice: the seventh pur sui vant messenger from the angelic college of heralds produces the action. The indicative mood is declarative representing the verbal idea from the viewpoint of reality. The angel hasn’t sounded the trumpet yet, and before he does we are going to get a message.

The message is given by the kai again. This is the adjunctive use of kai and it is translated “also.” The seventh trumpet is going to begin a time of great historical disaster and we will see many principles dealing with historical disaster and its meaning in the time in which we live. We will see the blessings which come from historical disaster and the greatness which comes from it. We will see how failure is developed in historical disaster, why people give up, why they are distracted, why people are divorced from reality.

With this we have the aorist middle indicative of ginomai, “there were also.” The constative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety. The middle voice is the deponent verb, therefore middle in form, active in meaning. Loud voices are going to produce the action of the verb. These loud voices have been studied before in 5:11 where we read in that passage, “I both saw and heard the voice of many angels around the throne, plus the voice of the angelic heralds and the angelic general staff: and their number was beyond counting ...”

The indicative mood is declarative representing the verbal idea from the viewpoint of reality. It is time once again to see that even though things are bad on the earth, as illustrated by the third woe, God has control of everything from heaven. Once again this is noted by the predicate nominative plural composed of two words, megaj, “loud,” and fonh, the word for sound. Once again we are going to have loud voices or loud sounds. The loud voices are explained by 5:11. They include the four angelic heralds representing the angelic college of heralds, the 24 angelic staff officers representing the elect angel order of battle, plus billions of elect angels. And they were saying something, the present active participle of legw. The pictorial present presents this to the mind as something to refresh before we get back into disaster. The active voice: the three categories of elect angels actually produce this fantastic sound of worship. The circumstantial participle can be translated as a finite verb or as a participle, and can be translated “which were saying” or “and said.” The sounding of the seventh trumpet takes us to the point of the second advent of Christ in the sense that it begins the eschatology of the devil’s desperation and/or the third woe.

The content of the message which is given in worship follows. Certain things are very important in worship as we have noted before. You cannot give in worship what you do not possess. Those in heaven possess something to give in worship that we do not possess today. Certain categories possess glory and therefore they can give glory to God. That is the highest thing that can be given in worship. We on this earth cannot give glory to God, we do not have the qualifications because we do not possess any glory on this earth. Those who advance to maturity inside of the divine dynasphere will have glory to give in the future, when they receive their crowns, when they receive the uniform of glory, and when they receive the order of the morning star. So the highest thing anyone in heaven can give is glory, and that is what these three categories of angels are going to do. The highest worship that man can possess must come from truth [doctrine] in his soul. Doctrine resident in the soul is the means of the highest expression of worship. When truth is absent then there must be something else as a worship substitute which is false and which is related to arrogance. It can be some form of ritual without reality or it can be some form of works which glorifies man instead of the principle, as with the angels, which is giving glory to God.

Arrogance negates the truth, therefore, in another way. Arrogance destroys worship. It is impossible to enter into worship and to give truth to God in worship as long as arrogance is present in the soul. You cannot give in worship what you do not possess and, of course, all worship is based around the perception of Bible doctrine. Arrogance is a distraction to that perception. All worship is based on the application of Bible doctrine. The worship of the communion table is the application of the doctrines of soteriology and Christology to the ritual in which we engage. Ritual is therefore legitimate in that particular situation because arrogance is eliminated. You cannot concentrate, you cannot apply doctrine at the communion table if there is any form of arrogance involved. That is why rebound is so necessary. But the same thing is true as far as learning doctrine is concerned. Learning doctrine means doctrine in the soul. Once doctrine is in the soul you can give it in worship as you give it in application to your experience in life. Therefore the person who succeeds is always the person who has doctrine.

Spiritual success is for the believer who has Bible doctrine. Those who have Bible doctrine have something to give the Lord. The more doctrine they have the sooner they come to maturity, and when they come to maturity they form a pivot. As goes the pivot so goes the prosperity and blessing in any given generation of people. This pivot also becomes a basis of honouring the Lord because periods of prosperity in history are related to that pivot. From this concept of having truth, “you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,” comes the highest concept of worship in giving recognition to God.

The elect angels in heaven all declare before we start the details in chapter twelve, the details of the eschatology of the devil’s desperation, the greatest period of historical disaster in all of human history. Before they even start the angels announce what happens at the end. It is going to turn out all right. In the meantime, a message in angelic worship to the population on the earth who are positive, those who have positive volition toward doctrine. No matter how bad things get God still has control of history. Not only does He have control of history but your life is in His hands and in great disaster God has a purpose for your life even as in times of great prosperity. Even before this eschatology begins we have this wonderful statement in heaven: It will all turn out all right. Not only will it all turn out well but for those believers living on the earth with Bible doctrine in their souls but they are going to have the privilege of living in one of the most exciting times in history and surviving it perfectly. God’s grace is just as strong in time of adversity as it is in time of prosperity. God’s provision does not go out with adversity, it never changes.

The first announcement of the Millennium is given in verses 15-19. So we have an outline because this part of the passage should go with chapter twelve.

We have first of all the anticipation of the Millennial reign of Christ in verses 15-19.

We have the background for the seventh trumpet in chapter 12:1-11.

We have the third trumpet which is a part of the third woe in verses 12-17.

This anticipates the time of perfect environment on the earth, the Millennial reign of Christ, beginning in 11:15-19.

Verse 15, “When the seventh angel had sounded his trumpet there were also loud voices which were saying.”

What is the content of the message? First we have a subject in the nominative singular and it is basileia in the Greek, translated “kingdom.” It refers here to the fact that we are about to anticipate kingdoms in poor environment suddenly becoming kingdoms in perfect environment due to the second advent of Christ. With this we have another aorist middle indicative from ginomai, meaning to be or to become. It should be translated, “the kingdom of the world has become.” This is a culminative aorist, it views the coup de tat of the second advent in its entirety but regards it from the viewpoint of existing results, perfect environment on the earth for one thousand years before eternity begins. The active voice: (actually a middle voice but a deponent verb, active in meaning) the kingdom of the world produces the action. The indicative mood is declarative representing the verbal action from the viewpoint of historical reality. The historical reality is the second advent. Then we insert the accusative direct object, “the kingdom of our Lord,” the objective genitive from the noun kurioj. We have with this the possessive genitive of e)gw, “our Lord,” remembering that the elect angels in heaven are speaking and they call God the Father “our Lord”; on earth the world “Lord” is used for the Son.

We have a connective kai and the objective genitive of Xristoj, and with it we have a)utoj, the intensive pronoun used as a personal pronoun, third person, and it refers to God the Father, “and his Christ.” The word improvised provides that angels are speaking in this context. They refer to God the Father as Lord and God the Son as His Christ. Believers on earth use kurioj for God the Son; elect angels use kurioj for God the Father. The principle: In order to accomplish this Jesus must return in His hypostatic union to remove Satan as the ruler of this world. By removing Satan He has removed one of the greatest problems but the problems are not going to change. He has removed Satan as the ruler of this world and He has established perfect environment but perfect environment plus the old sin nature immediately gets out of hand. The angels speak of God the Father and God the Son because of the major issue involved: Does God keep His word? The answer, of course, is obviously yes.

The Davidic covenant is unconditional, which means it has not been fulfilled to Israel. The covenant simply says in 2 Samuel chapter 7 that David is going to have a son who will reign forever. This is an unconditional promise to David. This immediately brings up an issue: Will God keep His word to David? If God keeps His word to David, God will keep His word to Israel.

Daniel 9:24 gives us the concept of how things develop for the second advent and the fulfilment of the unconditional covenants to Israel. All of this brings up a major issue: Does God keep His word? It is demonstrated that He does.

“Four hundred and ninety years have been decreed for your people [Israel],” this was a message given to Daniel dealing with the principle that after the termination of the fifth cycle of discipline to Israel in BC 516 and the completion of the walls of Jerusalem in BC 445, the Jews would have 490 years. 516 BC was the year that the temple was completed under the ministry of Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest, “and your holy city [Jerusalem].” The key date here is the date 445 BC. This is the date when the clock begins for the next increment of 490 years of Jewish history. They were to be give another 490 years; they had just completed 490 years.

In 586 BC 490 years had been completed, and that was the year that the Chaldeans came for the third time under Nebuchanezzar and took the Jews into captivity, destroying the city. Fifty years later in BC 536 Cyrus the Great, king of Persia issued a decree which made it possible for a remnant of Jews to return to rebuild the temple. They returned under Zerubbabel the ruler and Joshua the high priest. The temple was finally completed in 516 BC. But while that ends the fifth cycle of discipline it does not start the time clock. The reason that the fifth cycle of discipline lasted for seventy years is because in the first increment of 490 years the Jews disobeyed a command. The command was to observe their sabbatical years, a part of economic concepts and prosperity. They did not observe these sabbatical years so God gave them all of their sabbatical years at one time — 70 years, from 586 BC to 516 BC. That completed the fifth cycle of discipline but it did not begin the time clock, however.

The time clock is not going to start until 445 BC, but in 458 something else had to happen. The Jews had to get back on to Bible doctrine and the importance of Bible doctrine, so God selected the great man Ezra to go back and remind the Jews of the importance of doctrine. Then in 445 Artaxerxes sent Nehemiah back to rebuild the walls and the streets of the city of Jerusalem. BC 445 begins the second increment of 490 years. Between the second and third increments is the Church Age.

Daniel 9:24 continues with six things to be accomplished at the end of the second increment of 490 years. At the end of that increment, which will be the second advent of Christ, God is going to fulfil His unconditional promises, the Abrahamic, Palestinian, Davidic, and New covenants. But that isn’t the only thing to be fulfilled. Six things are to be fulfilled; God keeps His word. These six items are all accomplished at the second advent of Christ.

The first of the six, “to finish the transgression.” The second advent of Christ terminates the fifth cycle of discipline which began in AD 70.

The second of the six, “to make an end of sin.” This is the baptism of fire which eliminates Jewish unbelievers of the Tribulation.

The third of the six, “to make a propitiatory covering over iniquity.” (Note the corrected translation). The propitiatory covering over iniquity is the regathering of the Jews at the second advent to become the client nation in the Millennium. This regathering terminates the fifth cycle of discipline. The fourth six, “to bring in everlasting righteousness” — the resurrection of the Old Testament believers, and specifically the Old Testament Jews and the Tribulational martyrs.

The fifth six, “to seal up the vision and prophecy”. This is the fulfilment of the unconditional covenants to Israel.

The sixth six, “to anoint [or dedicate] the holy of holies”. The dedication of the Millennial temple.

All six of these items are fulfilled at the second advent of Christ and are a part of His tactical victory.

Next we have in verses 25 and 26 the chronology between the two administrations of the fifth cycle of discipline to Israel. This is a prophecy of that period between 445 BC down to 30 AD and 70 AD, when the fifth cycle of discipline is administered.

The second 490 begins in 445 BC but it is not a continuous period. There is a break, as we will note. Daniel 9:25, “You must know then and understand [“Know” is perception; “understand” is application] that from the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince [the first advent] is 483 years,” the remaining seven will be in the Tribulation. The time is measured in lunar years and the lunar year is not the same as our calendar year. A lunar year is 360 days.

The problem with 483 years is how to get a date from it that makes sense. From 445 until Messiah we have 483 years, so we start with the fact that we have 483 years in that increment, as per this passage in Daniel. How are we going to determine a date there? But when we subtract 445 from 483 we find a very serious problem because the difference is 38 years. It has to come up 30 or 32, not 38. We can knock out one more year because of the transition from BC to AD. So our magic number is now 37. But Christ did not die in AD 37.

The problem is very simple. Daniel’s prophecy is in lunar years; our calendar works on the calendar year. There are five extra days in the calendar year. All we have to do then is to multiply 490 times five. That gives us the extra day problem. Multiplying 490 by 5 gives us 2,450. Dividing that number by 360 gives us five days short of seven years. That makes 30 AD the date.

But if you say that we are dealing with 483 years here, and we are, we can take 483 and multiply it by five. We get 2,115. Then, again, divide it by 360 and you get almost 5. And 5 from 37 is 32, for those who prefer the 32 AD date. Christ died in April of either 30 or 32 AD. The reason for using 490 rather than 483 is because when it says the Tribulation is going to last seven years, it is seven lunar years. It is putting all of the calendar in one basket.

Continuing in verse 25 — “it [Jerusalem] will be built again, with streets and moats, even in times of distress.” That is the first 49 years, a reference to Nehemiah chapter two and following describing the opposition to the rebuilding of the walls. The first increment of the 49 years terminates in BC 396, just after the completion of the book of Malachi. The book of Malachi takes up the social problems in Israel when the Jews were already failing. One of them was marriage and the other was taxation. After Malachi was completed that first increment was completed; just as after Revelation was completed you have the greatest period of prosperity in all of history. The Old Testament ended with pivot failure; the New Testament ends with pivot success.

In verse 26 we have two great events at the end of the 483 years. “Then after 434 years [added to the 49] Messiah will be cut off and have no one [“and have no one” is a Chaldean idiom meaning “not for himself”],” When Messiah is cut off He is not going to die for Himself, He is going to die for the sins of the world, “and the people [the Romans who destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70, Luke 21:20-24].”

While 434 takes us to the point of the cross the actual administration of the fifth cycle of discipline did not occur until AD 70. Between 30 and 70 AD we have the grace period, grace before judgment. Why wasn’t the 5th cycle administered in 30 AD? Because grace precedes judgment always. The grace period is mentioned in Isaiah 28: Jews who had the responsibility for evangelising in their client nation status are going to be evangelised in Gentile languages, the function of the gift of tongues, that is when it was used legitimately.

“and the people of the prince,” the prince is not there, he is said “to come.” Notice: “the people of the prince who is to come.” The people are SPQR, Roman empire; the prince who is to come is the future dictator of the revived Roman empire. There is an historical Roman empire and there is a prophetical Roman empire. The historical Roman empire ended in 476 AD; the prophetical Roman empire begins in the Tribulation. So we have “the people of the prince who shall come.” The people are the Romans in the time of this prophecy and the prince who is to come is the Roman dictator of the prophetical Roman empire of the Tribulation.

“who will destroy the city,” the people destroy the city, not the prince who is to come, “and the sanctuary [the temple],” and that is August of AD 70, “and its end [in AD 70] will come like a flood. Furthermore, to the end [of the Jewish Age],” this skips over the cross and the Church Age, and the Rapture of the Church and the Tribulation. The “end” refers to the second advent of Christ, “wars and desolations [historical disasters] are decreed.”

Verse 27, the Tribulation or the last seven [lunar] years. “And he [the dictator of the revived Roman empire of the Tribulation].”

Who is this “he”? He is described in the scriptures in eight different ways:

a. He is described as the prince in Daniel 9:26.

b. He is the feet of the image in Daniel 2:31-35.

c. He is the little horn of Daniel 7:8,9, 19-26.

d. He is the prince of Tyrus in Ezekiel 28:1-10.

e. He is the personification of the abomination of desolation in Daniel 11:31; 12:11; Matthew 24:15; Mark 13:14. The abomination is a statue of this dictator set up in the holy of holies in Jerusalem.

f. He is the man of sin in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-10.

g. He is the anti-Christ in 1 John 2:18. (The problem is there are two anti-Christs in the Tribulation. The word “anti” means a. “against”; b. “instead of”) The dictator of the revived Roman empire is the “against” type. The dictator, the false prophet, of Israel in the Tribulation, passing himself off as the Messiah, is the “instead of”.

h. He is the scarlet coloured beast on whom the whore rides — Revelation 17:3, 8-13.

And we will study him as the beats out of the sea — Revelation 13:1-10.

“will make a firm covenant [treaty] with the many [the Jews of the nation of Israel in the Tribulation] for one week,” that one week is the last seven years of the Age of Israel, the Tribulation. Shortly after the Rapture the revived Roman empire will make a treaty with Israel, and it will last for one week, seven years, “but in the middle of the week [Tribulation] he will put a stop to the sacrifice and food offerings; and under the protection [wing] of the abomination [ecumenical religion of the Roman dictator] there comes one who causes desolation [the Roman dictator] until the end [of the Tribulation]. Then what is decreed will be poured out on the desolator,” i.e. it is decreed that he will go to the lake of fire at the second advent.

Revelation 11:15, “and he shall reign for ever and ever.” We have the intensive use of the conjunction kai, “in fact,” and the future active indicative of the verb basileuw, “he will reign.” The active voice: Jesus Christ produces the action of the verb for the last one thousand years of history, perfect environment on the earth. But it says at the end here, “forever and ever,” e)ij touj aionaj ton aionon, which is literally, “unto the ages of the ages” and means “forever and ever.” In other words, the Millennial reign of Christ, starting at the second advent, is the last one thousand years of history and the great test to demonstrate that perfect environment is not the solution to man’s problems. At the end of that there will be the Gog revolution, and that first 1000 years is the end of history but the rule of Christ will go on forever and ever.

The angelic conflict began in human history with perfect environment in the Garden of Eden; it will terminate with perfect environment throughout the world in the Millennium. Man failed in the perfect environment of the garden and man will fail in the perfect environment of the Millennium.

Perfect environment does not bring happiness. The key to happiness is virtue. Those who have virtue in perfect environment will be very happy and very prosperous; those who do not are going to be very miserable in perfect environment, and when Satan is released to start the Gog revolution they will be right there with him.

Another principle that comes out of this which may seem rather remote at first: the masses have no mentality. You can never trust the masses, the mobs of people, people who always want something without responsibility, want something for nothing, always demanding something. Masses are arrogant because they have the mob syndrome, the demand syndrome.

In verse 15 we read: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord,” that is the beginning of the Millennial reign of Christ, “and his Christ; in fact he [Christ] will rule forever and ever.”

As we move into verse 16 the subject, again, is worship: the worship of the 24 angelic staff officers who are always the leaders in worship. The posture of worship is noted first. It isn’t often when worship is taught in the Bible or mentioned, or is brought into the context, that the posture is so emphasised. So we note first the posture of these second highest ranking angels in the angelic order of battle.

We have a consecutive conjunction kai translated “then,” We have the nominative plural subject which is the 24 angelic staff officers. We have a verb, the present middle participle from the verb kaqhmai, correctly translated “who were sitting”, the descriptive present tense for what is now going on. Apparently they do their work sitting, and this has a very significant verb. People who work sitting work with their brains. These are smart elect angels. Even at that stage of the angelic conflict — they are now in human history — they are still thinking, they are still using their minds.

Principle: Your life is never better than your power of thinking. Without thought running through your soul your life is nothing. Without the ability to think, without the vocabulary to think, without the desire to think, without enthusiasm about something that requires thought, your life is useless.

The middle voice: this is a deponent verb, it is middle in form and active in meaning. The 24 angelic staff officers sitting produce the action of the verb. The participle is circumstantial. And they are not sitting on their seats, as per the King James version. The Greek clarifies the issue for us, e)pi plus the accusative plural of the noun qronoj. These are not seats in the sense of chair, these are thrones indicating achievement, achievement by thought. Spirituality can never be divorced from thinking. Basically, as we define it, spirituality is the filling of the Holy Spirit, but the purpose of the filling of the Spirit is perception of doctrine. Perception of doctrine is thinking.

So they were sitting on their thrones, indicating achievement, indicating the greatest possible type of achievement, the only achievement that is eternal in nature. For we have another prepositional phrase, the improper preposition e)nopion. And with it we have the genitive of qeoj, “before God”. They have made their achievement in the past, in the angelic conflict before human history, “before God.” Therefore they sit before God, “Then the twenty-four angelic staff officers who were sitting on their thrones in the presence of God.” This is the highest and the ultimate in spiritual achievement. For the angels are already in their eternal status quo and these 24 angelic staff officers occupy thrones in the presence of God, indicating the ultimate in spiritual achievement, and indicating that this ultimate in spiritual achievement was acquired through whatever system of spirituality God had for the angels. But it was related to, and not divorced from, thought.

Now they leave their thrones. It is time for worship and the change in posture is very important. On the throne they are doing something that they have always done well — the ability to think. But here is something that is very important: they now change their posture. They go down on their faces and they are going to go into worship. The important thing to learn from this change of posture is that worship is not emotion, worship is thought. They move from thinking on the job as staff officers to worship. They make the transition and they tell us a story by doing it. The story is told in two ways: first by the content of their worship, thought, application of doctrine, and, secondly, by moving to a new posture and thinking. Change of posture does not mean changing from thinking to emotion.

There is a lesson here. Happiness is a state of the soul, not the body. The body can be stimulated. The connection between the soul and the body is emotion. People often think that because they are emotionally stimulated that somehow they are happy. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The soul was designed to think. Happiness cannot be divorced from thinking. And that is why Bible doctrine is so important because Bible doctrine is a system of thought. When your soul leaves our body in physical death you take with you your thinking, and your thinking goes to heaven in your soul. Then you get an interim body and you will think in that interim body, and that is the period of great happiness but it is because you took your thinking with you and you are now in heaven, the perfect environment for thinking. The earth is not the perfect environment for thinking, this is the devil’s world. Arrogance destroys thinking. Arrogance is related to emotion, not thought. Arrogance is subjectivity, and subjective thinking simply depends upon emotion or environment or something that is related to the body or the earth. So it becomes imperative to realise that spiritual life is devoted to thinking. And spiritual life includes, as we have noted before, worship. Your true worship is thinking.

When the 24 angelic staff officers changed their posture to prostration in the presence of our Lord by falling on their faces they are still thinking, as will be noted in a moment by what they say in verse 17. They have something to say because they are thinking. And we have already noted the principle: You cannot give what you do not have. If you don’t have thought you can’t worship the Lord, as illustrated by the communion table, the Eucharist. You can only worship up to the point of your ability to think.

The aorist active indicative of piptw is the change of posture from working [sitting on the throne] to worship. The aorist tense is a constative aorist, it contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety. It takes up everything they are going to say in the next verse or two and gathers it into one entirety, because that is their worship. The fact that they fell on their faces before God is not worship; the fact that they were thinking something is worship. The change of posture is merely to show us that all worship is based upon, not only the filling of the Spirit, but on doctrine and humility. The posture is the posture of humility, they fall on their faces before the throne. Every time the 24 angelic staff officers are mentioned in terms of worship what they say is of the utmost importance. It is the content; it is the thought. Along with the four angelic heralds they express the epitome of worship in the glorification of Christ, the glorification of God. You glorify God by what you think and by what you express in worship, not by what you emote.

We note the reason for their prostration. The posture of worship emphasises the fact that all worship is the function of humility. Enforced humility: you concentrate even though you are tired; genuine humility: you are concentrated because you are interested. The posture of worship, therefore, emphasises both enforced and genuine humility. Worship cannot exist in the Church Age apart from royal family residence, function, and momentum inside the divine dynasphere. The 24 angelic staff officers worship in heaven; our worship is conducted inside the divine dynasphere. Worship cannot exist in the Church Age apart from the system: the divine dynasphere.

Then we have the phrase, “and they worshipped.” We have the connective conjunction kai for “and.” Then the aorist active indicative of proskunew which means to worship. The culminative aorist tense views the worship of the 24 angelic staff officers in its entirety but it regards it from the viewpoint of existing results.

The message of verses 17 and 18: their message is significant enough to make it a part of the Word of God forever and ever. What they say becomes a pattern for thought in worship, a pattern for principle in worship, a pattern for application in worship.

The active voice: the 24 angelic staff officers produce the action of the verb, as they did in Revelation 4:10-11.

We also have a dative singular indirect object from the noun qeoj. The dative indirect object indicates the one in whose interest the act of worship is performed. They worship God; it is in His interest.

Translation of verse 16: “Then the twenty-four angelic staff officers, who were sitting on the thrones in the presence of God, fell on their faces, and they worshipped God”.

The angelic general staff cannot give in worship what they do not possess. They have a complete knowledge of doctrine, they possess that in their souls. They have a complete knowledge of the doctrine of eschatology related to the second advent of Christ and His Millennial reign. Note that the 24 angelic staff officers in the expression of their worship are pre-Millennial. Therefore, in their worship they express doctrine resident in their angelic souls. Only cognisance of doctrine can express that doctrine in worship. You cannot express in worship those doctrines about which you are ignorant. The more doctrine you know the greater becomes the expression of your worship toward God, the greater your love for God expressed in worship. Again, therefore, the principle: Worship requires thinking. Ignorance of doctrine has no basis for worship.

Remember the principle of this passage: You cannot offer in worship what you have not acquired by grace. Therefore you cannot give in worship what you do not have.

The first word of verse 17 is the word “saying,” the present active participle of the verb legw. Now we are going to get the content of worship but we have to assume that this was not all that was involved in the expression of their worship. They said many other things but only those things which are pertinent to us as believers were actually recorded in the canon of scripture. In verses 17 and 18 we have a very short message expressed in worship and it begins with the expression of thanksgiving.

The present active participle of legw indicates that we are now going to get a part of what they said in their worship, the part that applies to us. The descriptive present tense of legw indicates what was then going on or will be going on in the future. Then active voice: the angelic general staff composed of the 24 elders produces the action of the verb, and it is a circumstantial participle. We can translate it, therefore, “and said” rather than “saying.”

The first thing that we note in that which is recorded is thanksgiving: the present active indicative of the verb e)uxaristew, “we are thankful” or “we thank you.” This expresses the first concept in worship. Thanksgiving is a very rare thing in time of national degeneracy. People are not appreciative and this is always true when any country involves itself in socialism of any form. Socialism, in effect, says that no matter how terrible a person is the government owes them a living. There is no government without taxation and what happens, in effect, is that successful people are constantly bailing out people who have totally and completely failed. As long as you stay on the free enterprise system that is all right, but when you bring socialism in any form into to the picture then immediately you destroy something in the personality of the people within a national entity. You destroy their capacity for life, for love and for happiness.

Thanksgiving is an expression of individual capacity. No two people have exactly the same intensity of thanksgiving. There are no two people in the world who are to the same degree appreciative. But it takes certain things to be thankful. First of all, it takes humility. Those who are oriented to life and free from the subjectivity of arrogance have the ability to be thankful. They have true gratitude in their souls; they are appreciative of anything that is done for them. Thanksgiving is not only a part of prayer but here it is an expression of worship.

“We are thankful,” we have the perfective present tense which refers to what has come to be in the past and is emphasised as a present reality. The active voice: the 24 angelic staff officers produce the action. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of their thanksgiving in worship.

With this we have the dative singular indirect object from the pronoun su, “we are thankful to you.” With it we have a vocative singular kurioj referring to our Lord Jesus Christ and translated, “O Lord.” This is actually addressed to the Lord Jesus Christ who is there, and He is now called “the omnipotent God.” We have a nominative singular of appellation or a nominative of apposition from two words: qeoj and the noun pantokrator. Pantokrator originally meant “all-powerful,” for the word pan, meaning all, and pantor which meant “ruler.” Each noun is preceded by a definite article. The basic function of the Greek definite article is to point out individual identity, hence to point out the object and draw attention to it. Hence, the definite article points out the particular object, and the particular object about which they are thankful is the omnipotence of God. The article is used with the name of Christ as God because of His hypostatic union and it is assumed that this doctrine of the hypostatic union is well-known to the reader. The definite article can be construed also as generic since it takes deity and sets deity apart as a separatory and worthy of worship, unique and different from creatures who are doing the worshipping. “We are thankful to you, O Lord, the omnipotent God.”

The omnipotent God refers to the deity of Christ though this is addressed to Him in hypostatic union. Along with this is a reference to the strategic victory of Christ at the first advent. This is accomplished with the participle e)imi used twice. It is the verb to be, used as the articular present active participle and translated “who is.” The definite article is used as a relative pronoun. The present tense is a static present representing a condition which is assumed as perpetually existing, the omega glory of our Lord Jesus Christ in His hypostatic union. The omega glory of Christ refers to His third royal patent which he received after His ascension and the strategic victory of the first advent. The active voice: Jesus Christ in His glorified state produces this action. And, again, we have a circumstantial participle representing the omega glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Then we have the connective kai, “and,” plus the definite article used as a relative pronoun, “and who always existed,” the perfect active indicative of e)imi. The imperfect tense is a descriptive imperfect, it is used for linear aktionsart in past time. In His alpha glory Jesus Christ has always existed. The active voice: Jesus Christ as eternal God produces the action, and the indicative mood is declarative for the fact that Jesus Christ is not only true humanity but in this passage He is eternal God. The words “and art to come”, as in the King James version, are not found in the original.

We have the alpha and omega glory combined in the form of the strategic victory of Jesus Christ on the cross. In His alpha glory Jesus Christ is eternal God; in His omega glory Jesus Christ is in hypostatic union.

We need to remember that this worship expressed by angels is directed toward the Lord Jesus Christ who is unique. The essence of God comes from this same verb o)usia from which we get “essence,” the very being of the deity of Christ. God is a spirit. His attributes, His qualities are invisible to human perception which means that we cannot understand God through rationalism or empiricism. The believer, of course, is totally dependant on what the Word of God has to say. In the doctrine of divine essence we recognise the fact that God has always existed in three persons, and one of them is in view here — God the Holy Spirit. Because Jesus Christ is eternal life there never was a time when He did not exist; because Jesus Christ is immutable there never was a time when His deity could be changed or jeopardised. The fact that God exists in three separate and distinct persons is well documented in the Word of God and each one of these persons has identical essence.

We are here interested in the attributes of deity as they relate to the Person in our context, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ as God has two categories of divine attributes. He has, first of all, the intransitive or the absolute category. These are primary and cannot be communicated. The relative attributes are transitive, secondary and communicable, and it is through the relative attributes that we come to understand the absolute attributes of our Lord as God.

All thanksgiving must relate to the absolute, God Himself. When thanksgiving is divorced from its relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ as the God-Man then it loses something; and no matter what people do for you, if you do not understand His attributes, His plan, if you do not have His virtue [gates 5 and 6] people are going to do thousands of things for you and you will never appreciate any of them. That very lack of appreciation is the arrogance or the subjectivity which will make you miserable all the days of your life. To the extent that you have genuine gratitude in your soul, not something that is worked up because you know you are supposed to do it — it is based on doctrine in the soul. It isn’t the gift you appreciate, it is the giver. And that is the way it is with the Lord, and before you will ever be on a true thanksgiving basis you are going to have to appreciate the Lord.

Notice that the angels in verse 17 do not mention anything about what they have been given. They have been given crowns, they have been given great decorations. The said: “We are thankful to you, O Lord.” Thanksgiving must be directed toward the person who gives, not the gift itself.

“who is,” Jesus Christ in His omega glory is the God-Man, “who was,” the alpha glory of Jesus Christ as God in eternity past. And why the order? Why do we have the omega glory first, “who is”? Why the God-Man? Because this is the greatest gift of all. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son”; “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.” Always the gift that is most important comes first, and the gift that is most important is eternal life purchased for us on the cross.

We now have a reference to the tactical victory of our Lord Jesus Christ at the second advent. It comes up with the causal use of the conjunction o(ti which means “because.” With it we have the perfect active indicative of the verb lambanw. This means a dramatic perfect which emphasises the results of the action. It is the description of the fact of a vivid and realistic gift, something He has done. The active voice: the glorified Christ in hypostatic union produces the action. The indicative is the declarative indicative for a dogmatic statement of Bible doctrine.

The accusative which follows is the direct object and is composed of three words, megaj, meaning “great”; dunamij, meaning “power”; and autoj, used here for the third person personal pronoun. It is translated, “your great power.”

— “because you have taken your great power.” The angels are power conscious, they have just gone through the angelic conflict, the prehistoric part. You can be power conscious in an evil way and you can be power conscious in a good way. The good way is where you have gratitude, where you recognise authority, where you possess personal humility, where you have virtue. This power consciousness is a good power consciousness, it is something that isn’t abused. But then there is a pseudo power consciousness in which arrogance intervenes and makes it a system for the abuse of others.

The final phrase: “and you have begun to rule,” the aorist active indicative of basileuw which means to rule or to reign. That refers to the Millennial reign of Christ. The angels are thankful for something that hasn’t happened yet, so there is a sphere of gratitude in the sphere of eschatology. But it also has application. At the time that John wrote there was a need for God’s power, not their own. There was the use of divine power that made the age of the Antonine Caesars, immediately after writing Revelation, one of the greatest periods in all of history.

The aorist tense is an ingressive aorist, it contemplates the action of our Lord’s eternal rule at its beginning, the second advent of Christ. The active voice: Jesus Christ in His hypostatic union, omega glory, produces the action, He begins His rule. The indicative mood is declarative for a statement of doctrine related to the second advent of Christ and His tactical victory. The Millennium begins with the second advent and the maximum use of divine power. What the angels are anticipating and are thankful for is that great power, that maximum power. That maximum power is not being used in the Church Age. Why? Because the Church Age, more than any other dispensation in the history of mankind, demonstrates the importance of making good decisions which utilise the power of God without abusing the power of God. So God has deliberately limited His power. Since the canon of scripture is completed miracles are out. The great power that He has given us today is not the power of miracles, it is the power of the divine dynasphere. Jesus Christ is not using raw power as He will at the end of the Armageddon campaign in Revelation chapter 19, He is utilising His power through believers who can accept or reject that power. Acceptance versus rejection is what you do with gate four (perception and application of doctrine), the momentum gate.

The most powerful nation in all of history was SPQR, the Roman empire. During the course of the Roman republic and then during the empire after the second Punic war, the masses had their way with regard to one thing — socialism. The Roman government was supporting as many as a million people with free food and other things at a time when populations were very thin. Whenever this happens, as long as you have a strong industrial complex, a strong economy, you can pay for socialism. All socialism is taxing the rich to feed the poor and, in some cases, scum. As a result, eventually socialism wins, the masses demand more and more, and they destroy the nation. This was the reason for the destruction of the Roman empire. Socialism can only exist as long as there is a major capitalistic system to support it. That means good business function.

Verse 18, the restoration of Israel at the second advent. Why do we study the Millennium when we are not yet through with the Tribulation? The point is to encourage Israel, for no one will be persecuted in the Tribulation as much as Israel. All of the previous holocausts involving Israel will be nothing compared to what Satan will try to do in the Tribulation, and therefore Israel must constantly have before them a true hope, and the hope is mentioned in this passage. The born again Jews of the Tribulation plus all of the resurrected Jews in the first resurrection will be regathered at one time to form a great nation in the middle east. So the Jews need encouragement, especially those who have personally believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, those who understand the true meaning of the ritual of Israel, “Shamah Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai echad.”

In response to this type of thing the masses are always angry. Demagogues and evil nations always react to the truth. We find, therefore, in verse 18 the reaction to this type of message, “And the nations were angry ...” The nations always react to anything that is truth and they always stick their nose into someone else’s business.

We start out with the conjunction kai which introduces a result from what precedes, translated “and so.” Then we have the nominative plural subject from e)qnoj which refers to nations, plus the aorist active indicative of the verb o)rgizw which means to be angry. The anger is one that generally comes from emotion. We have noted before that emotion has no power to think, it has no power to rationalise, it has no standards of any kind. Emotion was designed as a part of the soul to be a responder to thought. O)rgizw is a Greek word for emotional anger, anger which is senseless and useless, anger which is typical of people who cannot think, who have no truth and no standards by which to decide what is right and what is wrong. The aorist tense is a constative aorist which contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety. The passive voice: the nations of the world receive the action of the verb at the second advent, at the coronation of Jesus Christ. They react to the fact that now there is going to be perfect government on the earth. Actually, evil people are never worried about perfect government, they simply want power to exercise. And when anyone who is evil exercises power it is always tyranny, for they do not care about rights and freedom, they only care about themselves and their power lust. The indicative mood is declarative representing the verbal idea from the viewpoint of reality.

There is one prophecy about this anger mentioned in Psalm 2:1-3. “Why do the nations rage, and why do the people plot [or form conspiracies] in vain?” So the first verse in Psalm 2 poses two questions regarding nations in the Tribulation. Why do people react against anything that is perfect? God is perfect, He has a perfect plan for us. He has a perfect system by which nations can govern their people.

Verse 2, the explanation. “The kings of the earth take their stand [against our Lord],” in the last half of the Tribulation, the time of the eschatology of the devil’s desperation, we find that nations are raging against God. There are four blocks of nations in the Tribulation: the king of the north, the pan-Arabic bloc, the oriental bloc, and the revived Roman empire. So we have spheres of influence. Nations form blocs of nations to protect themselves, “and the rulers conspire together against the Lord [God the Father], and against his anointed [God the Son], saying, Let us destroy their restraint, let us throw off their chains.” The restraint here refers to God’s restraint in history under the principle that Jesus Christ controls history. Were it not for divine restraint we would not be alive, nor would there be any people on the face of the earth for people all have a tendency of self-destruction. “Throw off their chains” means that God the Father, God the Son so function in the Tribulation to preserve a large population for entry into the Millennium.

So we have as a result of this the anger of God the Father. This is an anthropopathism ascribing to God a characteristic which He does not possess but explains divine policy in terms of human frame of reference.

We have the temporal use of the conjunction kai translated “then”, plus the nominative singular from the subject o)rgh. God meets anger with anger, as it were. God is perfect, God cannot be angry, but this describes something of God’s attitude in our verse 18. It is translated, “Then your anger.” This is a reference to the anger of God the Father as portrayed in Psalm 2:4-6.

“And he [God the Father] who is enthroned in heaven laughs: the Lord scoffs at them,” so the divine anger toward these nations is described as laughter, as if the creature could ever challenge the creator.

“He [God] will speak to them in his anger, he will terrify them in his wrath,” a reference to the closing events of the Tribulation and the second advent. This speaking to them in His anger refers to the Armageddon campaign and how He will terminate it. It refers to the baptism of fire and how the unbelievers of the earth will be separated from believers: believers will go into the Millennium but the unbelievers will be cast into fire.

“But for me [God the Father], I have installed my King [Jesus Christ, the son of David] on Zion, my holy mountain.”

Then we have the phrase in our passage in Revelation 11:18, “then your anger came,” the aorist active indicative of the verb e)rxomai. E)rxomai means the anger of God trumps the anger of nations. This has always been true to some extent but this is the last trump ever played by the second advent of Christ. In the meantime God controls the nations of the world and permits the continuation of man on this earth under the principle that Jesus Christ controls history. In this way we know and we have a guarantee that right down to the end of history there will always be large populations on this earth and that no sophisticated weaponry will destroy the entire population of the earth. The only thing that will ever destroy the population of the world, or a large segment of it, will be the Lord Himself at the second advent or the baptism of fire when a new civilisation begins with believers only.

“your anger” refers to God the Father producing the action of the verb in the following way: He turns over all judgment to Christ who separates the wheat from the tares at the second advent. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of the baptism of fire. With the baptism of fire we have the resurrection of Old Testament saints.

“also the time,” the adjunctive use of the conjunction kai and the nominative singular of kairoj. With kairoj we have the adverbial genitive of reference, nekroj, “the time with reference to the dead.” Nekroj refers to those who are physically dead, the Old Testament saints who are going to be resurrected. The Old Testament believers include Jews and Gentiles but the emphasis in this passage will be on the Jews who are resurrected. The Tribulational martyrs will also be included, they are resurrected at the second advent of Christ.

The regathering of Israel demands that all Israel be present, including Abraham, the father of the Jewish race, and Moses, the father of the client nation Israel. And. of course, the resurrection of any category of persons demands their evaluation or judgment. In this case we have the resurrection of believers which means their evaluation of their time on earth. Some will receive reward and decoration and some will not. Hence, a situation which is comparable to the judgment seat of Christ. However, this is at the second advent.

The corrected translation of verse 18 so far: “And so the nations were angry, then your anger came [the second advent of Christ, the baptism of fire], also the time with reference to the dead [the resurrection of the Old Testament saints and Tribulational martyrs].”

The next word in this sentence is the aorist passive infinitive of the verb krinw which means to evaluate or to judge. Here it means to be evaluated. The aorist tense is a constative aorist, it contemplates the evaluation of all the Old Testament believers and Tribulational martyrs in its entirety. This evaluation is comparable to the judgment seat of Christ. The passive voice: just as you and I as believers will be evaluated at the Rapture of the Church so these believers of the Old Testament and Tribulational martyrs will be evaluated at the second advent. The infinitive is an infinitive of actional result, it is the actual result of the second advent and the regathering of Israel. In the regathering of Israel many of the Old Testament saints are going to receive great reward and high decorations. Therefore, many of them are going to rule ten cities, twenty cities, five cities, and some none.

We have a conjunction which follows but the conjunction is used in the expletive case. Kai sometimes is only used to render an explanation, and when that happens it is translated, “that is.” Then we have another infinitive, this time the aorist active infinitive of didomi which means to give. The culminative aorist tense views the decorations which are going to be given at that time but regards them from the viewpoint of existing results. The Millennium is going to be a time when there will only be great rulers. Most of the rulers will be in resurrection bodies therefore they will be able to rule under the principles of perfect government, perfect environment and blessing for all. The active voice: Christ produces the action and this is an infinitive of actual result.

“to be evaluated, that is, to give,” what is given is mentioned as the accusative singular direct object from misqoj, reward, decoration. Those who rule in Israel when Israel is regathered in the Millennium, and those who rule Gentile nations in the Millennium will be rulers in resurrection bodies. They will have staffs of those who are in resurrection bodies. With their resurrection bodies they will be able to accomplish many unusual things. The will move vertically or horizontally, they will function under great wisdom, the solutions to problems will be instantaneous, and perfect environment will continue throughout the Millennium.

Next comes the dative plural indirect object from douloj, used here for servants, those who serve the Lord properly in life. Service always begins with virtue. There is no plan of God that does not put virtue first. Virtue and integrity must reside in the believer before anything that he does is significant. So we have the dative of indirect object, “to your servants.” This indicates the ones in whose interest the act of reward is performed, Old Testament believers, Tribulational martyrs who achieve maturity during phase two.

Then we have the dative plural indirect object of hagioj which refers to the saints, the Old Testament believers who attain maturity. We have two dative plural indirect objects. One is profhthj, the prophets, and the other is hagioj, “to the prophets and to the saints.” Then we have a third category, those who respect or reverence his person. That would be the Tribulational martyrs. We have a dative plural indirect object from the present middle participle fobew which can mean either fear or respect. Here it means respect. Those who are martyred during the Tribulation have more respect and love for the Lord than for their own lives. The indirect object indicates Tribulational martyrs who achieve maturity in phase two. It is to their advantage to receive rewards and decorations at the second advent and they will be resurrected ahead of their peers who survive the Tribulation.

In this passage where we have fobew we have a perfective present tense denoting a fact which has come to be in the past, phase two of the Old Testament prophets, and so on. Those who have functioned to glorify the Lord in past time, and it emphasises a present reality. They are going to receive rewards and decorations. In the middle voice the subject, mature believers of the Old Testament, Tribulational martyrs — act with a view toward participating in the outcome. They are going to be rewarded, they are going to be rulers in the Millennium. The middle voice relates the action of the verb more intimately to the subject, and since the verb here is fobew these believers, first of all, have motivating virtue. They respect the Lord. They will not have, as we have, the divine dynasphere but they will have the equivalent of gate five. They will have great love for the Lord, and that love for the Lord is motivating virtue which is the basis for all reward. Rewards are given to them for their functional virtue as a result of motivating virtue, so the same policy applies in every resurrection where believers are concerned. If you have virtue first then your production is meaningful; if you put production before virtue then there is no reward. That production is the wood, hay and stubble of 1 Corinthians 3, it is burned at the judgment seat of Christ. Only Church Age believers possess the divine dynasphere to accomplish this.

A new plan has to be brought into focus for the Tribulation. Reason: the Church Age so far has lasted nearly 2000 years. We do not know how long it is going to last but when the royal family is completed there will be the resurrection of the Church. Our way of life is the divine dynasphere. But the Tribulation is going to last only seven years, therefore the plan of God for Tribulational believers must be an accelerated plan so that believers can advance rapidly to maturity. It will be an accelerated spiritual life such as has not been seen in the history of the world.

This middle voice is called a dynamic middle because it emphasises the part taken by the subject in the action of the verb. These believers who are rewarded are winners. The participle is circumstantial and we translate it: “and to those who respect.”

Next comes the accusative singular o)noma which means the person or the name. Here it refers to the person. With this we have the pronoun, “his person,” “and to those who respect his person.” That is personal love for Jesus Christ. How do you know when you are advancing in the spiritual life? You know it because of gate five in the divine dynasphere, you have a personal love for God. That is the ultimate in virtue. The only virtuous love that is personal is personal love for God. Personal love for God as the motivating virtue produces gate six, the functional virtue of impersonal love for all mankind. All production comes out of gate six and it must be prefaced by gate five. There must be personal love for God before there can be production in the Christian way of life.

“and to those who respect his person,” personal love for Christ, motivating virtue, occupation with Christ. The adjectives which follow are classified as an anacoluthon which is in the form of an accusative absolute without any participle. The accusative absolute is grammatically independent of the rest of the verse. We have two adjectives which follow. There is the accusative plural of mikroj, and mikroj is not going to mean what it appears to mean in the King James version. It refers here to the humble and the insignificant and it is simply a way of designating the lower classes, people who have not achieved as others have, people who are in lower classes of society. Here, what is ordinarily translated “little” means the lower classes. Then the second accusative plural is the adjective megaj, and in the anacoluthon this means the upper classes, “both lower and upper classes.”

Three points with regard to these classes

1. Note that the lower class believers have the same opportunity to achieve spiritually and to become winners as the upper class or the privileged class. Because one is in a lower class of society it does not hinder him from becoming a winner. God has a plan that goes right through class distinction.

2. Class distinctions and racial distinctions are never issues in the spiritual life, only positive volition toward doctrine which causes the believer to advance to maturity. Class distinction is set aside for those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

3. These Tribulational believers present in their resurrection bodies at the second advent are classified as Tribulational martyrs in contrast to the Tribulational believers who survive the Tribulation and go into the Millennium to form the population in the Millennium. There will be class distinctions, even in the Millennium.

We have one more phrase in verse 18 which deals with the tactical defeat of Satan. It begins with the adjunctive use of the conjunction kai, meaning “also,” plus the aorist active infinitive of diafqeirw which means to destroy, “Also to destroy.” The culminative aorist tense views the expelling of fallen angels or demons from the earth plus the imprisonment of Satan in its entirety but regards it from the viewpoint of existing results. Christ becomes the ruler of the world and perfect environment will exist for one thousand years. This is the tactical victory of our Lord which complements the strategic victory at the cross. The active voice: Jesus Christ produces the action of the verb, and this will be amplified in Revelation chapters 19 and 20. This is the infinitive of actual result, the second advent of our Lord Jesus Christ.

With this we have the accusative plural direct object from the definite article touj. With it we also have the present active participle again of diafqeirw, and here it means again to destroy but it is in the present tense, “to destroy those who keep on destroying the earth.” The present tense is a perfective present referring to a fact which has come to be in the past: the fact that five demon assaults on the earth have been the source of destruction. The active voice: from the fall of man to the second advent fallen angels have been producing the action of the verb. The particle is circumstantial for the angelic conflict extended to human history. Then the accusative singular direct object from gh referring to the earth.

Corrected translation: “also to destroy those who destroy the earth.”

Everything mentioned in verse 18 must occur before Israel can be restored as a client nation to God in the Millennium. The removal of Satan as the ruler of this world plus the destruction of the entire Satanic organisation is necessary for the restoration of Israel. Before Israel can be restored and become the recipients of the Abrahamic, Palestinian, Davidic and New covenants there must be this clearing the way for it. Until that time Israel is always the target for Satanic attacks.

Translation of verse 18: “And so the nations were angry. Then your anger came, also the time with reference to the dead [resurrection of the OT saints] to be evaluated; that is, to present the rewards to your servants, namely to the prophets, and to the saints, and to those who respect his person, both the lower and upper classes; also to destroy those who destroy the earth.”

The signs of the restoration of Israel are given in verse 19. There are a few words that are mistranslated in the King James version. We begin with the sequential use of the conjunction kai, “then,” with the nominative subject naoj referring to the temple in heaven. The temple that was in existence at the time of the Exodus (in the form of the tabernacle), and the temple which was built in the days of Solomon, is simply a counterpart to the great temple in heaven, the temple which portrays all of the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ in the angelic conflict, breaking the back of Satan in the strategic victory of the cross and then the tactical victory of the second advent. This is the temple with the possessive genitive of qeoj, this is the temple of God. This temple resides in heaven and has always been in heaven and, of course, the counterpart has been as per the instructions given in the Word of God for the building of the temple.

So we have a subject. The heavenly sign is the fact that there is a temple in heaven. And immediately we ask, Why is there a temple in heaven? Why is it necessary?

This temple is Jewish. It is the Jewish temple which portrayed the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, every facet of the temple. Every bit of it is to demonstrate to Israel that in heaven there is the fact that the Jews will always exist and that Satan will never be able to destroy the Jews. Remember that Satan has access to heaven and spends a great deal of time there. Satan has to pass this temple periodically and he knows the significance of it. The significance of the temple in heaven is the fact that God keeps His word, that God is faithful, that there never will be a time when God does not keep His word. The illustration is Israel. God keeps His word to Israel and Israel will always exist in spite of every Satanic attempt to destroy the people of Israel. God keeps His word through His unconditional covenants; God keeps His word through the Lord Jesus Christ, for every bit of the furniture in that temple speaks of Christ.

Next we have a nominative neuter singular from the relative pronoun o(j, translated “which,” rather than “who.” We insert the verb e)imi because of ellipsis, “which was.” Then we have a prepositional phrase e)n plus the locative of ouranoj, telling us that this temple is in heaven, “which was in the heaven.” This temple of God is in heaven as a guarantee and a reminder to all the fallen angels who live in heaven and a reminder to us who will live on earth, that God will keep His word to believers, and that there is a group where believers and unbelievers exist where God will keep His word. God always keeps His word when He makes a promise.

Then we have the aorist passive indicative of a)noigw, and it means to open. The culminative aorist tense views the opening of the heavenly temple in its entirety but it regards it from the viewpoint of existing results. The existing results are implied in the next passage, the regathering of Israel, the restoration of Israel as a client nation to God, and Israel going into the Millennium as the client nation to God for the last one thousand years of history and forever. With this we have a passive voice: the temple receives the action. The indicative mood is declarative for the reality of this sign from heaven: Israel has a future. As goes the Jew so goes the future of eschatology and there will always be Jews alive on this earth.

Next we have a connective kai and a nominative singular subject, kibwtoj, which refers to the ark. With this we have the possessive genitive singular diaqhkh, meaning covenant, “the ark of his covenant,” we have a possessive genitive singular from the intensive pronoun a)utoj used as a personal pronoun.

The ark of the covenant is a box made out of acacia wood and overlaid with gold. It is the symbol of the Lord’s presence and the client nation status of Israel. It was located in the holy of holies. How do we know that Israel was a client nation when it came out of slavery from Egypt? Because they had the ark of the covenant with them. How do we know that they were a client nation in the Old Testament? They had the ark of the covenant. They lost the ark of the covenant when they were taken into captivity in 586 BC, the fifth cycle of discipline, and again in 70 AD. The original is in heaven and there in heaven they have the sign that there will always be Jew in every generation in history, and that there will come a time, second advent, when Israel will be restored.

“Then the temple of God which was in heaven was opened, and the ark of the covenant was seen”. Again, the ark of the covenant is the symbol of the Lord’s faithfulness and the Lord’s presence in the client nation Israel. It is located in the holy of holies of the Jewish tabernacle, then the temple, but there is no Jewish tabernacle or temple today and the original is in heaven itself.

It is called the ark of the covenant because it contains the tablets of the Mosaic law, but it also contains the promises dealing with the unconditional covenants to Israel. As the symbol of the Lord’s presence in the client nation status of Israel the ark was always carried in advance of Israel on the march. We notice this first in Numbers 10:33; Deuteronomy 1:33; Psalm 132:8. The ark remained in Shiloh until the time of the priest Eli when it accompanied the army in a campaign against the Philistines. It was taken along for good luck in battle but it turned out not to be good luck in battle, it was a misuse of the doctrine. The doctrine speaks of the Lord’s faithfulness, it was not a good luck charm, and when they decided in the days of king Saul to take it into battle as a good luck charm then immediately it was abused and misused, and that was the end of it. Distortion or misuse of doctrine results in great discipline from God. They were defeated by the Philistines and the ark was captured. It was brought back eventually by David.

When the temple was constructed the ark was then again placed in the holy of holies. The ark of the covenant of God is described in detail in Exodus 25:10-22; 37:1-9. The acacia wood represents the humanity of Christ; the gold represents the deity of Christ; the construction of the box represents Christ in hypostatic union. The guarantee of eternal salvation for anyone who believes in Christ, the guarantee of the future of Israel is based upon the fact that Jesus Christ, eternal God, became true humanity and went to the cross and was judged for our sins. The ark represents the fact that Jesus Christ is the God of Israel, and He is both the saviour and the deliverer of Israel. In the structure of the ark we have the uniqueness of our Lord Jesus Christ. The ark represents the fact that Jesus Christ, the God of Israel, is also the saviour of the world, and only Jesus Christ, the son of David can fulfil the unconditional covenants to Israel. But the ark also reminds Israel that there must be a first advent for provision of eternal salvation before Christ can come again and regather them.

The ark also reminds us of another factor because inside of the ark are deposited three categories of sacred articles. We know this from Hebrews 9:4. First of all, the tables of the law which defined freedom for the client nation to God and were the basis for the laws of divine establishment. Freedom. in turn, must be related to the future of the nation for even though God has promised the Jews would have a future their positive volition is demanded for entrance into that future. That means that every Jew, like everyone else, must personally believe in Christ for eternal salvation. If he is going to see the fulfilment of the future of Israel this is absolutely necessary.

Secondly, there was the urn of manna representing the principle of logistical grace. God has provided for all believers under logistical grace and has especially provided for Israel in this regard. It also emphasises the fact that Jesus Christ controls history. Then there is Aaron’s rod that budded which represents the spiritual factor in the function of the client nation: the function of the priesthood, the importance of the pivot of mature believers, for the dissemination of doctrine was primarily in the hands of the Levitical priesthood. Later on God had to raise up prophets in order to strengthen the function of Bible teaching in Israel. Aaron’s rod that budded advises us of the separation of temporal and spiritual powers. It is a part of the laws of divine establishment that freedom cannot exist without all temporal and spiritual power being separated, and there must never be an overlap of one into the other.

Over the top of the ark was the lid, and on top of that lid was a solid gold throne. On each end of the throne there was a cherub. These cherubs were looking down toward the seat of that throne. In the box we have the articles; they also represent sin. Sin is a violation of divine law, divine standards. In the use of the pot of manna, this was sin in the sense of rejection of divine authority. Aaron’s rod that budded had the same connotation, rejection of logistical grace. Everything in the box, then, also speaks of man’s failure and man’s sin.

On the top of the ark is the mercy seat. It is described in Exodus 25:17-22. It was constructed of solid gold representing the essence of God. On each side of the throne was a cherub with gold wings. The cherubs represent the believer’s point of contact with God which is the integrity of God. One cherub represents the perfect righteousness of God, the other represents the perfect justice of God. That is our point of contact with the integrity or holiness of God.

Once a year on the day of atonement the high priest would come in and sprinkle blood over the top of that mercy seat. The righteousness of God looks down and sees the blood and is satisfied — propitiation; the justice of God looks down and sees the blood and is satisfied, for the justice of God judged our sins — that was the representation of the animal blood, and the righteousness of God can therefore be imputed to anyone who believes in Christ. That opens the door for the justice of God providing logistical grace to every believer, because whether the believer is a winner or a loser that grace pipeline is open. Everything that sustains us in life comes from the justice of God down this great pipeline to the righteousness of God. Again, it delineates the faithfulness of God to each one of us.

“was seen,” the aorist passive indicative of o(raw. It was actually seen in heaven. It is not on earth; it is simply seen, a manifestation once more that in view of what is coming up in the next chapter Israel will survive it all and there will always be Jews alive in every generation, including the generation of the Tribulation. The constative aorist contemplates the action of the verb in its entirety. The passive voice: the ark receives the action of the verb. The indicative mood is declarative representing the verbal action from the viewpoint of reality. Once again we have e)n plus the locative of naoj, “in his temple.”

Translation to this point: “Then the temple of God which was in heaven was opened, and the ark of the covenant was seen in his temple.”

What follows are the earthly signs of judgment against anti-Semitism. These are merely weather signs and it is bad weather for anyone who seeks to persecute the Jew. It is a warning that God never allows anyone to get away with anti-Semitism. The aorist middle indicative of the verb ginomai is translated, “and there was.” Then we have the signs. We have a)straph, correctly translated “flashes of lightning.” As flashes of lightning it means that there are many people who are punished for anti-Semitism that realise why they are being punished. There are those who apparently understand the issue. Many people, of course, do not know why they are being punished for anti-Semitism and so we have other warnings.

Next we have the predicate nominative plural from fonh which should be translated “noises.” Some people have delicate ears and a very sensitive form of hearing, and noises shatter them. This means that a lot of people who are sensitive about normal things are going to be shattered because of their anti-Semitism.

Next we have the predicate nominative of the noun bronth, “thunder.” So there are flashes of lightning and noises and thunders.

Finally, we have two more: the predicate nominative of seismoj, “earthquake,” “and great hail storms.”

Corrected translation: “Then the temple of God in heaven was opened, and the ark of the covenant was seen in his temple: and there followed flashes of lightning, and noises, and thunders, both an earthquake and great hail storms.”

Principle

First of all, the restoration of Israel is preceded by the events of Revelation chapter 12, the greatest anti-Semitism movement in history personally led by Satan. It will be the attack of Satan’s third demon assault army.

Secondly, the seventh trumpet does not begin formally until Revelation 12:12-17. This seventh trumpet is a part of the third woe which precedes the restoration of Israel at the second advent. Of course, the third demon assault army makes many attacks, one is upon the Jew. So while the seventh trumpet is a part of the third woe it is not the entire third woe.

Thirdly, we note that the seventh trumpet is the greatest and most awful Jewish persecution in history. It is the holocausts of holocausts.

Fourth, we note that the divine guarantee of the restoration of Israel in this paragraph tells us that Satan’s attack will fail. But it will be used to judge many Jews who have rejected Christ as saviour.

Finally, the events in Revelation chapter 12 can be classified as retrospective exposition. They occur before this paragraph we have just studied, as far as chronology is concerned.