Read
Read Revelation chapter 11 – or listen to it below.
“Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.”
(Revelation 1: 3)
Think
John’s vision continues to draw from images and passages throughout the bible. The measuring sounds very much like Ezekiel’s vision of the restored temple in Ezekiel 40 onwards. The lampstands and the olive trees sound like the vision Zechariah has in Zechariah 4:1-14. We hear of ‘witnesses’ and ‘prophets’ throughout the bible, and the power these two witnesses have also remind us of moments from bible history – Elijah stopping the rain in 1 Kings 17, the plagues on Egypt in Exodus 7-12. Whose side do you think these witnesses are on? How about the beast that appears in verse 7?
It may be that there will be two particularly faithful witnesses who live out these things – more likely, John’s vision is telling us that throughout the age of the church, there will be men and women who follow Jesus, who take a stand on what God has said is true. Men and women who suffer for the sake of their Lord and for his gospel – who face opposition from a world in need of saving – yet whose hope is in the God who raised Jesus from the dead, and who will one day raise them too.
What becomes clear to me as I read Revelation is how important it is to spend time in all of the bible. If we want to make sense of it, you need to spend your life drinking in the whole of this book – not sticking with the bits you find easiest or most helpful, not picking and choosing – but reading it all, trusting that it all has its place.
Pray
‘Father, thathemselves.
Amen’
