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The Two Witnesses
In Revelation 11, we meet the two witnesses:

Revelation 11:3 & 4 And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.

Who are these striking individuals? Let’s look at some of the pros and cons of the most common identifications.

Joshua and Zerubbabel
Pros

• • This would be the literal, natural meaning – they are referred to as “men” who prophesy and work wonders.
  • In the Greek, the use of the article with the “two witnesses” leans toward the identification of them as individuals.

The Temple
What is the temple spoken of in Revelation 11? Is it an end-times temple constructed by faithful Jews in present-day Jerusalem? Or, was it Herod’s temple which was destroyed in 70AD? Perhaps it is a picture of God’s people. Here are a few (not all) of the pros and cons with each of these understandings.

The Restored End-Times Temple in Jerusalem
Pros

• • This would be the literal, natural meaning – we see a literal temple, two real witnesses, in the actual city of Jerusalem, the times are literal, etc..
  • The linguistic argument – it is called “the temple” using the same terminology consistently used throughout the Bible
  • A third temple is prophesied in Ezekiel 40 – 48 and measured in the same way
  • Daniel 9 speaks of the Abomination of Desolation taking place during the tribulation, 2 Thessalonians 2 speaks of the lawless one in the temple before the coming of the Lord and Revelation 13 picks up these themes.

Tea-Bag mail Protest Worries Post Office

Illinois’ lieutenant governor is urging people to mail tea bags to two electric utilities to protest rate increases — an idea that leaves the post office cold. The Postal Service on Wednesday encouraged people to make their point instead with empty tea bags, saying lumpy bags could harm its equipment and create security scares by leaking brown residue.… Read the rest

In Chapter 10, John sees an angel holding a bibliridion — a small book or booklet. This was in the day when scrolls were common and small books of flat pages pasted together were just coming into use, so “a small scroll” is an appropriate translation. Some call it the little apocalypse, because it appears to contain much the same message as the entire Revelation. John writes:

Revelation 10:8-11 Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me once more: “Go, take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.”… Read the rest

Recent events in Israel and Lebanon have Evangelical Christians abuzz for a number of reasons. But, when it comes to eschatology, inquiring minds want to know. Is the current Jewish state of Israel the fulfillment of prophecy? Did God promise to return His people to the land in the last days. This is a good question and I’ve assembled some thoughts on the subject. I’ll be throwing around some specialized terms, so be sure to use the resources I’ve linked in the right column if you’re unsure about labels such as futurist, preterist, dispensationalist, etc..

Most dispensationalists such as John Walvoord, Thomas Ice, and Dwight Pentecost would expect to see Israel returned to the land, fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham:

Genesis 15:18 – 21 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.… Read the rest

I think these verses are some of the saddest, most sobering in the entire Bible:

The rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood — idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts. Revelation 9:20 & 21

This is mankind’s response to the unleashing of the horde of demonic locusts out of the Abyss in Revelation 9, attacking those who have not been sealed by God for His supernatural protection.… Read the rest

What is the relationship among the seals, trumpets, and bowls? Do they follow one another in sequence, do they overlap or do they follow any sequence at all? This is a question that many have wrestled with and the different answers to this question span all methods of interpretation.

There are three options… ( I should learn by now to say, “at least…”)

1. They are sequential, just as they appear in Revelation.
2. The seals, trumpets and bowls conclude at the same point in time, so that each group of seven takes us back to the beginning of the previous seven, describing the same events using different symbols or pictures.

How consistent and effectual are your prayers? Do your prayers even matter? After all, God will do as He pleases anyway. Do you ever wonder if God even hears you when you pray, because you approach Him so half-heartedly? In Revelation 8, we encounter a scene that should hit us like a splash of cold water in our faces and sober us up to the reality that our prayers are powerful, crucial to the execution of God’s plan, impacting the world in which we live.

Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne.… Read the rest

Camille Salisbury, CPA. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? How about Camille Bailey, CPA? Today, Camille received a nice birthday present when she got word that she had passed her final component of the CPA exam with a score of 91%! Mom and dad are proud.… Read the rest

One of the greatest pleasures in my recent study of the Revelation has been to discover some of the lesser known, yet Biblically rich ideas out there. These are the conclusions of commentators I had not seen in popular treatments of eschatology. One of these is Richard Bauckham’s identification of the 144, 000 as an army, which Greg Beale sees waging “ironic holy war.” The Book of Revelation pp 422 – 426 Does that sound a little dramatic; perhaps a little weird? If so, perhaps it seems strange only because of our predisposition to popular treatments of the end times, rather than thorough study of the Scriptures.… Read the rest

Then I saw another angel coming up from the east, having the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm the land and the sea: “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel. Revelation 7:2 – 4 (NIV)

When we consider the 144, 000 servants of God, there are two primary identifications.… Read the rest