The Two Witnesses

Have you ever heard someone say, "The Bible is an outdated book"? For centuries, philosophers, emperors, and dictators have tried to bury the Bible. The famous French philosopher Voltaire declared, in the 18th century: "In a hundred years, the Bible will be a forgotten book, found only in museums."

The irony? Fifty years after his death, the very house where he had lived was purchased by a Bible society and used to store Bibles floor to ceiling.

Chapter 11 of Revelation tells the story of this war against the Word of God. John sees two witnesses, dressed in sackcloth, prophesying with power, killed by a beast, and rising again in spectacular fashion. Who are they? And why does the world hate them so much?

Who Are the Witnesses?

The text says: "These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the God of the earth" (Rev. 11:4).

To identify a symbol, we use the Bible itself.

Jesus said: "You search the Scriptures... for they testify of Me" (John 5:39).

Zechariah 4 pictures olive trees supplying oil (the Holy Spirit) to lampstands (Light).

The Two Witnesses are the Old and New Testaments. Why two? Because under biblical law, two witnesses were required to condemn or acquit anyone. The Old and New Testaments walk together — one predicts the coming of Christ, the other records His arrival.

During the long 1,260 years of the Middle Ages (A.D. 538 to 1798), the Bible prophesied while dressed in "sackcloth." Sackcloth is the clothing of mourning and humiliation. During that period, the Bible was banned, burned, chained up in dead languages (Latin), and read in secret, in caves, by the Waldensians. Truth was grieving and obscured, but it was not dead.

The Murder of God (The French Revolution)

But the prophecy says that when they finished their testimony (near the end of the 1,260 years), the "beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit" would make war against them and kill them (v. 7).

This was fulfilled with chilling precision in the French Revolution (which began in 1789). Unlike the other beasts, which were religious, this beast "from the abyss" was the power of secular atheism. In 1793, France's National Assembly passed a decree unprecedented in human history: the abolition of God.

Bibles were gathered up and burned in public squares.

Worship of God was outlawed.

The seven-day week (established by God in Genesis) was replaced with a ten-day week (a décade) in order to eliminate the Sabbath/Sunday.

In God's place, they enthroned an opera dancer inside Notre Dame Cathedral and worshiped her as the "Goddess of Reason."

The text says the bodies of the witnesses lay in the street of the great city that is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt.

Sodom represents moral depravity (France legalized every kind of immorality).

Egypt represents defiant atheism (Pharaoh said, "Who is the Lord? I do not know the Lord").

For a brief period, the world saw what happens when a nation kills the Bible: the result was the Reign of Terror. The guillotine never stopped working. Blood ran through the streets of Paris. Without God, "human reason" turned into murderous madness.

The Resurrection (Three and a Half Days)

The Bible's enemies celebrated. The text says they "will rejoice... and send gifts to one another" (v. 10). France celebrated the end of Christianity.

But the party didn't last. The prophecy said: "Now after the three-and-a-half days the breath of life from God entered them" (v. 11). Applying the day-for-a-year principle: three and a half days = three and a half years.

Watch the historical precision:

The decree that outlawed religion and burned Bibles came in November 1793.

Exactly three and a half years later, in June 1797, the French government, horrified by the resulting social chaos, revoked the decree and restored freedom of worship.

The Bible rose from the dead! And the text says the witnesses "ascended to heaven in a cloud." This signifies exaltation. After the French Revolution, the Bible was not merely allowed again — it was lifted to a position it had never held before. In 1804, the British and Foreign Bible Society was founded. Bibles began to be printed by the millions and spread across the entire planet. The book they tried to kill became the best-selling, most-translated book in history.

The Seventh Angel Sounds

The chapter closes with the Seventh Trumpet (the Third Woe). When the Bible is restored and preached to the world, history reaches its climax. Verse 15 announces: "The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ."

The attempt to kill the Bible in France was Satan's last great effort before the time of the end. It failed. Today, the spirit of the French Revolution is back — secularism, mockery of truth, immorality — but the outcome will be the same. God's Word will remain standing.

The Lesson for Us

You can trust this Book. Empires have tried to destroy it, ideologies have tried to mock it, but it keeps transforming lives. If the Bible survived the guillotine and the fire, it can survive the skepticism of your college classroom or the indifference of your family. Do not be afraid to defend the Scriptures. They are God's immortal witnesses.