[Chapter 11-2] The Salvation of The People of Israel (Revelation 11:1-19)
(Revelation 11:1-19)
Why
would God send the two prophets to the people of Israel? God would do
so to save the people of Israel in particular. The main passage tells us
that God would make His two witnesses prophesy for 1,260 days. This is
to save the Israelites for the last time. That God would thus save the
people of Israel also means that the time for the end of the world would
have come.
Verse
2 says, “But leave out the court which is outside the temple, and do
not measure it, for it has been given to the Gentiles. And they will
tread the holy city underfoot for forty-two months.” This means that
when the horrendous plagues come to the Gentiles, when the seven-year
period of the Great Tribulation begins and gradually brings great
confusion and plagues, when those among the Gentiles who have heard and
believed in the gospel are martyred, God will raise the two prophets for
the people of Israel, make them testify that Jesus is God and the
Savior, and thus save the Israelites. It tells us that these are the
works of God to come.
We
must teach this Word to those who, deceived by Satan, claim that the
leaders of their denominations are the two olive trees of the end times,
or that the founder of their sect is the Elijah prophesized for the end
times. Whenever the worldly churches talk about Revelation, they
exploit this passage on the two olive trees the most. Of all the people
deceived by heretical cults whom I have met in my life of faith so far,
none has ever failed to make the outlandish claim that the leader of
his/her cult is one of the two olive trees mentioned here. Every heretic
that I know has made such a claim eventually.
But
the two olive trees and the two lampstands of Revelation are not what
these heretics claim to be. In truth, these olive trees actually refer
to the two prophets whom God would raise from the Israelites to save
them.
Chapter
11 tells us in detail how God would save the people of Israel. Like the
Book of Romans, each chapter of the Book of Revelation has its special
theme. Only by knowing this theme can we understand what this chapter is
all about. Reading that the Gentiles would tread the holy city
underfoot for forty-two months, some people claim, without knowing this
theme, that the era of the Gentiles would be over, the era of the
salvation of the Israelites would instead open, and so from then on only
the Israelites would be saved.
But
this is far from the truth. Chapter 7 tells us that a countless
multitude from the Gentiles would also come out of the Tribulation
saved—that is, both the Gentiles and the Israelites would be saved
throughout the Tribulation, not just the Israelites. As such, what
chapter 11 tells us is that God would thus raise the two prophets to
save the people of Israel in the end times, but this does not mean that
the Gentiles would no longer be saved.
Some
will ask in return, then, “Were not 144,000 Israelites already saved,
as chapter 7 tells us that this was the number of the Israelites sealed
by God?” Being sealed is not the same as being saved. There is no one
who can be saved without going through Jesus Christ. Salvation comes
only by believing that Jesus Christ became our Savior by coming to this
earth, being baptized to assume all our sins, carrying all these sins of
the world to the Cross and dying on it, and rising from the dead again.
Though
we know that we are bound to sin until our death, we were nevertheless
saved by believing that Jesus Christ made all our sins completely
disappear and thus became our Savior. While 144,000 Israelites would be
sealed, God would also raise up His two prophets, and through them
preach His gospel to these Israelites. What the Word tells us, in other
words, is that the two prophets would preach the gospel to the
Israelites, and that 144,000 of them would thus be saved.
The
Bible is never prejudiced or discriminatory. There is no one who can be
saved without going through Jesus Christ. God does not say, without
going through Jesus Christ, “You are saved, but you are not.”
The
two prophets, who are the two olive trees mentioned in the main
passage, will be killed at the place called Golgotha. Their dead bodies
will be left in the open without burial, and those who neither believe
nor accept Jesus will rejoice over their death and send gifts to each
other. But verses 11 and 12 tell us, “Now after the three-and-a-half
days the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their
feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them. And they heard a loud
voice from heaven saying to them, ‘Come up here.’ And they ascended to
heaven in a cloud, and their enemies saw them.”
This
tells us straightforwardly that we—that is, you and I who are
Gentiles—will also be martyred by faith when the time comes, and that
shortly after our martyrdom will come our resurrection and rapture. This
subject continues to make its appearance throughout the whole Book of
Revelation. There are also passages that tell us that when the plagues
of the seven bowls are poured on this earth, the raptured saints would
be praising God in the air.
Chapter
14 also speaks of the 144,000 saved, who praise God with a song that no
one else but the firstfruits of salvation can sing. What this tells us
that when the people of Israel are saved, they will be martyred
everywhere, and shortly after their martyrdom will come their
resurrection and rapture.
The
same applies to the Gentiles. In the end times, you and I will go
through many hardships of the plagues of the seven trumpets, but God
will still protect us from these plagues. When the Great Tribulation of
seven years reaches its height with the passing of the first three and a
half years, the persecution of the saints will also reach its peak. But
this extreme persecution will last only for a short time. Many saints
and servants of God will shortly be martyred, and quickly after their
martyrdom will come their rapture.
Why?
Because Revelation repeatedly records that by the time the plagues of
the seven bowls are poured on this earth, the saints would already be in
heaven praising God. The Word describes this as marvelous.
Revelation
10:7 says, “but in the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when
he is about to sound, the mystery of God would be finished, as He
declared to His servants the prophets.” This refers to none other than
the rapture, the mystery hidden by God. In 1 Thessalonians 4:16, the
Apostle Paul also tells us, “For the Lord Himself will descend from
heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the
trumpet of God.”
That
the Lord will descend from Heaven, however, does not mean that He will
come down to this earth immediately. He will descend from Heaven to the
air, and when the first resurrection that raises the asleep and
transforms the born-again alive happens, the rapture with which the
saints receive the Lord in the air will follow right away. After the
marriage supper of the Lamb is held in the air and this world is
completed destroyed by the pouring of all the remaining seven bowls’
plagues on this earth, the Lord will descend on the renewed earth with
us and make His appearance before those who would still be alive.
Interpreting
the Word of Revelation and the Bible based on one’s own individual
opinions is to embark on the road to destruction. It is simply wrong to
just believe in mere hypotheses proposed by some theologians and
advocate these claims without properly understanding the Word.
Among
the theologians who are highly respected and renowned in the
conservative Christian communities, some scholars such as L. Berkhof and
Abraham Kuyper espoused amillennialism. Of the theories of
pre-tribulation rapture, post-tribulation rapture, and amillennialism,
believing in this last doctrine of amillennialism is the same as not
believing in the Bible itself.
The
time when people used to believe in the theory of post-tribulation
rapture has now gone by, and in these days virtually everyone believes
in the theory of pre-tribulation rapture. But this theory, too, is not
biblically sound. Yet people still like it very much whenever they are
told about the pre-tribulation rapture. Why? Because according to this
theory of pre-tribulation rapture, Christians would have nothing to
worry about the Great Tribulation of seven years.
As
such, it becomes acceptable for the believers to live a life of faith
that is neither hot nor cold, and for the churches to worry only about
increasing the size of their congregations. People’s faith thus grows
lax. Because they think that there is no need for them to worry about
going through the Great Tribulation, their faith becomes all rosy and
lax just when their faith must in fact get stronger with the nearing of
the end times. People used to believe in amillennialism long ago, and
then in the theory of post-tribulation rapture for a while, and they now
believe in the theory of pre-tribulation rapture.
In
1830’s, Rev. Scofield, a professor at the Moody Bible Institute, began
to write his reference Bible. Scofield was highly influenced by a
world-renowned theologian named Darby.
Darby,
Scofield’s spiritual mentor, who used to be a Catholic priest before,
was a highly intelligent and widely knowledgeable man. He left the
Catholic Church after realizing its fallacies, joined a small Christian
organization, and became its leader. Though Darby constantly read and
studied the Bible, he could not figure out from Revelation whether the
rapture would happen before or after the Great Tribulation. So he went
on a trip in search of more clear evidences on this issue.
During
this trip he met a teenaged female who was a leader of pneumatology.
This girl claimed to have seen through her vision that the rapture would
happen before the Great Tribulation. Believing what she told him and
convinced that the rapture would come before the Tribulation, Darby
concluded His biblical studies with the theory of pre-tribulation
rapture.
However,
because the people of this time had mainly believed in the theory of
post-tribulation rapture, Darby’s theory of pre-tribulation rapture was
not received well.
Darby
claimed that what is written in the Book of Revelation is about the
salvation of the people of Israel, and that it had nothing to do with
the salvation of the Gentiles. And by “You must prophesy again (10:11),”
he interpreted this not as the preaching of the gospel of the water and
the Spirit, but of the gospel of the Kingdom that proclaims its coming
arrival.
Scofield,
who accepted such hypotheses of Darby intact and incorporated this
theory of pre-tribulation rapture into his reference Bible, came to
create his own hypothesis on the seven eras. Such claims of Scofield met
the demands of his time and fit rather well to his background, causing a
great stir among the religious throughout the world and becoming widely
accepted.
But
what does God say in the Bible? In the Scripture we see Jesus taking
and opening the scroll sealed with seven seals before the throne of God,
who has divided history into His seven eras with the seven seals.
The
first era is the era of the white horse. This is the era of salvation,
the era in which God decided to save us from the very moment that He
created this universe and man, and has indeed saved us accordingly. As
Revelation 6:2 tells us, “And I looked, and behold, a white horse. He
who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out
conquering and to conquer,” the Lord have triumphed and will continue to
triumph. Even before the creation, the gospel was already in existence
and salvation had already begun.
The
second era is the era of the red horse, the era of Satan. This is the
Devil’s era in which he would take away peace from the mankind, making
them wage war against each other, hate one another, and engage in
religious conflicts.
The
third era is the era of the black horse, which is a time of spiritual
and physical famine, and the fourth era is the era of the pale horse,
the era of martyrdom. The fifth era is the era of rapture—God has set
the saints’ rapture as one of His eras. The sixth era is that of the
seven bowls, entailing the destruction of this world, and the following
era is that of the Millennial Kingdom and the New Heaven and Earth. God
has thus set this world’s time into these seven eras, within the scroll
sealed by the seven seals.
Scofield’s
division of time into seven eras was set on his own. In contrast, the
seven eras that are prophesized in Revelation 6 through the seven seals
of the scroll held on God’s hand have been set by God Himself. Yet
people speak of the man-made theory of pre-tribulation rapture, and the
many who believed in it conclude that there is no need for them to
believe in the Lord earnestly.
They
have decided in their hearts, “Since we’d be raptured before the Great
Tribulation, we would already in God’s presence when the Great
Tribulation of seven years comes. So we got nothing to worry about!” Had
the Word of God told us that we were to be raptured before the
Tribulation, there would indeed be no need to prepare our faith, and
attending the church once or twice a year would suffice. But this is not
what God has told us.
“They
will prophesy one thousand two hundred and sixty days.” “They will
tread the holy city underfoot for forty-two months.” Such Word of God
tells us that the Gentiles, too, will be saved in the time of the
Tribulation. God will raise up His two prophets to spread the gospel of
the water and the Spirit. There is no one who can stand before God
without going through the first three and a half years of the seven-year
period of the Great Tribulation set by Him, when the time of hardships
comes. God also tells us that many martyrs will come out from the
Tribulation at this time.
To
believe in Jesus correctly, one must learn the Bible exactly and
believe in what are exactly correct. If people preach and believe on
their own without reading each page of the Bible carefully, they will
end up as heretics. The reason why there are innumerable denominations
in this world is also because of the fact that many people base their
faith on their own interpretation of the Bible.
That
the people of Israel would be saved tells us that God’s plan will be
fulfilled according to His Word of promise. This also tells us that God
will never break His Word of promise spoken to us but fulfill them all.
This is why we have such a great hope.
The
two prophets of Israel will be resurrected in three and a half days
after their death and ascend to Heaven. This is the rapture. It provides
a model for how the martyrs of the Great Tribulation would be raptured,
and is shown to us as a precursor to our own rapture. The Bible tells
us that after the sounding of the seventh trumpet, this earth will
become the Kingdom of Christ and He will reign over it forever. So, too,
will those who have trusted in Jesus Christ reign with Him.
God
will wholly destroy this earth after rapturing the saints. We don’t
know if the destruction will be for 100 percent, as this detail is not
recorded in the Bible, but God does tell us in Revelation 11:18, “The
nations were angry, and Your wrath has come, And the time of the dead,
that they should be judged, And that You should reward Your servants the
prophets and the saints, And those who fear Your name, small and great,
And should destroy those who destroy the earth.”
The
rapture will most certainly happen as the Great Tribulation passes over
its peak of three and a half years—not at the exact reaching of the
first three and a half years, but slightly past it. The midpoint of the
seven-year period is when the Tribulation reaches its height. This is
when the saints from the people of Israel will be martyred, and the
rapture will come shortly thereafter. When the rapture happens, we will
all join the marriage supper of the Lamb in the air.
While
we are participating in the marriage supper of the Lamb in the air, as
Matthew 25 tells us that we will, the plagues of the seven bowls will
descend on this earth. Praising God in the air and seeing all the things
that are happening on this earth, we will thank God for His grace all
the more.
I
hope and pray that through the Word of Revelation, you would be able to
discern the times when the last days come, believe in the Word
properly, live your life diligently by faith, and prepare for the
future. To give praise, honor, and worship to the Lord as you are taking
part in the marriage supper of the Lamb with Him, you must prepare your
faith.
I
hope that the Word of Revelation will prove to be a great guide for you
in the days to come, reminding your heart once again that you must live
diligently and truthfully by your faith in the gospel of the water and
the Spirit.
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