The ‘two witnesses’ who are killed are witnesses, in Jerusalem, in Israel for that is the name of the great City, where their Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ, was crucified. The two prophets could be faithful Jews who confess the Messiah as He is their Lord. And their bodies now lie over there, where their Lord Jesus was crucified, in Jerusalem. This City of God has become a pool of unrighteousness like Sodom due to the influence of these anti-Christian and anti-Semitic ‘beasts’. The worldwide message of judgement and repentance of these ‘two witnesses’ concerns also the inhabitants of ‘Jerusalem’. The City has become like ‘Egypt’, a symbol for oppression and the slavery of sin. This is the City where they speak and witness. This is where they will die, just like their Lord died, and like Zechariah, who was even stoned in the Court of the Temple.1 In the end of the end-times the true prophets will be killed and murdered.
But before that happens let us hope and pray and faithfully expect a powerful testimony in the ‘spirit of Elijah’ by the true Church of Christ—the Church of the end-times. Elijah means: ‘The Lord is God’. The ‘spirit and the power’ of Elijah are still available to work in the vanguard, the ‘storm-troopers’ of the true Church of Christ, fighting in the frontlines of the spiritual battles, or as a spiritual ‘resistance movement’, underground. This faithful ‘remnant’ in Christianity, the true Church, must be prepared and made fit for spiritual battle, as Elijah was.
As I am writing this, the phone rings. It is a Jewish rabbi, a good friend of ours. He expresses his concern about what is happening in Israel at the moment, but ends by saying: ‘Difficult times are not the worst ones however, and the easiest times are often not the best ones!’
Difficult times and circumstances offer the opportunity to grow spiritually. Elijah was lacking everything and had to learn to be dependent on God for everything, even for his food. The ravens fed him at the brook Cherith.2 He must have wondered if these birds would come back the following day. After that the brook, his source of water, dried up and he was in the middle of the desert! Thus, as he was led to become one of the greatest and most powerful Jewish prophets in Israel in the service of God Most High he had to learn these personal lessons. He had to learn to be dependent while staying with a destitute widow in Zarephath3 (which means ‘place of refining’) in the midst of those who were practising the religion of Baal and paganism, among heathens outside of Israel.
This is how “Elijah-Christians” come into being. They have to learn to drink from the well that is Christ, as their rock in the desert.4 They have to learn to live like foreigners and strangers5 in this world, so that they are able to testify in the midst of Baal-ridden Christianity—a small prophetic spear head, a vanguard that has first been tested in the Lord’s refining fire until it has learned complete dependence, trained in body, soul and spirit. And second, they need to be clothed with the ‘prophet’s camel-hair cloak’,6 to speak like John the Baptist: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is coming. The axe is already at the root of the trees.”7 The axe will be used shortly and the trees will fall. Forever. A Dutch proverb says: just as the condition of the tree is when it falls to the ground, this is how the tree will be forever! No more possibility to grow or change. For us there is still time to learn the lessons we have to learn…!
• Leaving bodies on the ground without burial was the greatest possible shame in ancient times.8
• ‘Sodom’ was already a symbol of corruption in the Old Testament. Judah is called spiritual Sodom (see Deuteronomy 32:32, Isaiah 1:9, Ezekiel 16:46, 49, 55 and Jeremiah 23:14).
• ‘Egypt’ is not used as a symbolic name for Israel or Jerusalem in the Old Testament.
Bible References:
1.2 Chronicles 24:21; Matthew 23:35; Luke 11:51; Hebrews 11:37 2.1 Kings 17:5–6 3.1 Kings 17:7–16 4.1 Corinthians 10:4; Numbers 20:11 5.Acts 13:17; Hebrews 11:13; Ephesians 2:19; 1 Peter 2:11 6.2 Kings 1:8; Matthew 3:4; Mark 1:6; Isaiah 20:2; Zechariah 13:4 7.Matthew 3:10; Luke 3:9 8.1 Kings 21:24; Jeremiah 8:1–2, 14–16
