Horae Apocalypticae The Two Witnesses Of Revelation 11

This Revelation Timeline Decoded Bible study provides text from E.B. Elliott’s Horae Apocalypticae Volume 2, Death Of The Witnesses and Resurrection Of The Witnesses sections.

Boasting over 2,500 pages for all four volumes with over 10,000 reference citations, E.B. Elliott’s epic work provides a systematic view of the Apocalypse.

First, I’ll give some context to Elliott’s explanation about the death and resurrection of the two witnesses of Revelation 11.

Revelation 11:1-2 says, And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.

This was primarily fulfilled by Martin Luther, a Catholic Monk, who was given the Holy Scriptures. It’s telling him, and us, to measure what a church teaches against the Holy Scriptures. Luther found that salvation was by faith in Messiah, and not by the sacraments by the Papal Church; and that the Papal Church was an apostate church, which has the appearance of being a part of Messiah’s Church, but is delegated to the outer court of the Gentiles.

Messiah proclaimed that the Scriptures ‘testify’ about Him and that His Saints are His ‘witnesses.’ The two church eras of Thyatira and Sardis, the two lampstands, existed during the 1,260 year reign of the Popes. The Scriptures feed oil to the Saints to give them light. This is why the Popes sought to wipe them out.

From 538-1514 AD, the Roman Catholic Church of the antichrist beast popes worked so relentlessly to eliminate the Two Witnesses of the Scriptures and the Saints, that the Papal Church pronounced them as being ‘dead.’

Elliott’s explanation about the death and resurrection of the two witnesses in Revelation 11 is very important to understand as it validates that the two witnesses were viewed as dead on May 5, 1514, and that they came to life again 3 1/2 years later on October 31, 1517, the day that Catholic monk Martin Luther posted his 95 Thesis to protest against the teachings of the harlot church of the antichrist beast popes.

NOTE: I did not include Elliott’s extensive footnotes. Click here to read the book online. I tried to correct the errors that resulted from copying the text from a PDF, but may have missed some. I’ve bolded the most important parts.

PAGE 449

The fact of the Cardinal’s mission, with this object, was published before the Council in a Papal Bull of the next or 8th Session, Dec. 16, 1513: and at the same time a citation was issued to the dissidents in question, to appear and plead either before the Cardinal Legate in Hungary, or before the Lateran Council at its next Session; a Session finally convened for May the 5th, in the spring ensuing.

So was the crisis come which was to try the faith of this little remnant of witnesses; and to exhibit its vitality, or death. And would they then face their Lord’s enemies? Would they brave the terrors of death, and plead his cause before the lordly Legate, or the anti-christian Council; like the Waldenses at Albi and at Pamiers, like Wycliffe and Cobham in England, like Huss and Jerome at the Constance Council, like their own confessors only ten years before at Prague, or like Luther afterwards at Augsburg and at Worms?

Alas! No! The day of the 9th Session arrived. The Council met. But no report from the Cardinal Legate (and reports from him we know there were) gave

PAGE 450

intimation either of the pleading, or of any continued stirring, or opposition, of the purer Section, any more than of the less pure, of the Bohemian heretics. No officer of the Council announced the arrival of deputies from them to plead before it. Nor again was there a whisper wafted to the Synod from any other state, city, or town in Christendom, of a movement made, or a mouth opened, to promulgate or support the ancient heresies.

Throughout the length and breadth of Christendom Christ’s witnessing servants were silenced: they appeared as dead. The orator of the Session ascended the pulpit; and, amidst the applause of the assembled Council, uttered that memorable exclamation of triumph,—an exclamation which, notwithstanding the long multiplied anti-heretical decrees of Popes and Councils, and notwithstanding the yet more multiplied anti-heretical persecutions and inquisitorial fires, was never, I believe, pronounced before, and certainly never since; “Jam nemo reclamat, nullus ohsistit!” “There is an end of resistance to the Papal rule and religion: opposers there exist no more:” and again; “The whole body of Christendom is now seen to be subjected to its Head, i.e. to Thee.”

If the submission and reunion of the Pisan schismatics and heretics was the fact most prominent in the orator’s mind as he uttered this paean, it is evident beyond all doubt that the fact of the apparent subjection and reunion of each and

PAGE 451

every other schismatical or heretical body, throughout Western Christendom, was also included. So did “they from the people, and kindred, and tongues, and nations,” assembled in Rome, that of Anti-Christendom, and “watch-tower of the world,” look on all anti-Papal witnesses as extinct and dead.

Let the reader well mark the description. For it is a description from the life. And let him well mark the day. For it seems to me scarce possible that we can be mistaken in regarding it as the precise commencing date of the predicted three and a half years, during which Christ’s witnesses were to appear as mere dead corpses in the face of Christendom. It was May 5, 1514.

There are yet two characteristic circumstances noted as accompaniments of this the Council’s recognition of the Witnesses’ death: the one affecting the slaughtered witnesses themselves; the other, its own friends and members.

The first is thus stated: “And they from the kindreds and tribes, shall not suffer their dead bodies to he put into a tomb.” The expression is of course symbolic; as having reference to the two symbolic witnesses, the Apocalyptic representatives of many. We have however already seen so much of the precision of the Apocalyptic figures, and their being drawn as it were from the life, that we may well suspect that such too was the case here; and that in some Bull or Edict of the Council, issued on the occasion, the indignity and outrage above mentioned may have been actually noticed, as that which legally attached to any such members of Christ’s anti-papal witnessing body as might individually happen about that time to lie dead.

And this indeed was the case. We find that an edict of reform and discipline was issued by Pope and Council, that selfsame day,

PAGE 452

just after the Preacher’s oration of triumph; one declared object of which was the perpetual elimination of all heretics from the Church visible: and that, in order thereto, there were adjudicated against them, throughout Christendom, all the “dehitce poence,” or punishments imposed on heretics by former Bulls and Councils.

Among the which punishments there was one that pursued them even beyond death; I mean the denial of burial to their bodies, as persons excommunicate, and barred even from the commonest rights of humanity: an indignity this borrowed from those which had been sometimes inflicted by Pagan persecutors on the early Christian martyrs; but of which the force and

PAGE 453

terrors were under the Papal regime tenfold greater in general estimation, forasmuch as it was supposed to involve the eternal damnation of the wretch unburied. So, I say, was there in the edict of the Lateran Council, on this very occasion, a recognition and an enforcement of this punishment:

PAGE 454

An enforcement of it applicable to the corpses of heretics, if any such there were, (and history does record such,) as might even then be lying dead, convict of heresy, in any part of Christendom. So that it was a fulfillment to the very letter of what was predicted; “They from the kindreds and tongues and people shall not suffer their dead bodies to he put into a tomb.”

The other act prophetically noted, as consequent on the Council’s recognition of the Witnesses’ death, is the mutual congratulations of its members, and other customary signs of joy, among them that dwelt on the Roman earth. “And they that dwell on the earth rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets troubled them that dwelt on the earth.”

And here too history does not fail to offer its illustrations. I take Pope Leo’s own Bull for the dissolution of the Council, dated in March 1517, as the illustrator. It speaks of all the objects for which the Council had been called, (and the reader will well remember that amongst those objects was “the total extirpation of heresies” of old heresies.

PAGE 455

as well as new,) as having been happily and successfully accomplished. It reports not only the extinction of the Pisan schism or heresy, but the universal union of the Church: besides that there was every prospect of peace among the princes of Christendom, such as might enable them to make common cause against the Turks.

“All which considered,” says Leo, “our soul exults in the Lord: and we judge that thanks should be given to God for it; and that, among all the faithful in Christ, there should he those signs of joy which on similar occasions are wont to be observed.” So, “for the greater joy,” a plenary Papal Indulgence was granted, and then the Te Deum sung.

Nor, if the making merry in banquetings was another of the customary modes of expressing joy on public occasions of festivity, was it omitted by Leo and his Cardinals; but acted out, very notably, on this auspicious occasion.

The splendor of the dinners and fetes given by Leo and the Cardinals on the triumphant close of the Council, a splendor unequalled since the days of Pagan Rome’s greatness, is made the subject of special record by the Historian of Leo the Xth.

He records it as a matter characteristic of the age and of the occasion. And it is precisely in this point of view that I would here wish to set the prediction before the reader; I mean as being not merely a true prediction of fact, but one (like the Apocalyptic pictures generally) characteristic of the spirit and feeling of the times. The more immediate subject of congratulation

PAGE 456

and joy was indeed, as I have said, the healing of the Pisan schism or heresy; because the other heretics had been reduced so low by former crusades and inquisitions, as to be no longer the object of terror that they once were. Yet the remembrance of the vexation and trouble occasioned by them, and this in times not very far distant, (even as by Elijah, the troubler of Israel, to king Ahab,) could not have past away.

In fact the very first Sermon before the Council, in terms tantamount to the Apocalyptic phrase, expressly records it. Hence the mixing up of the victory over them, among the ingredients of the joy of those that dwelt on the earth. Altogether, as Dean Waddington describes the scene on the Council’s closing, the feeling of joy, triumph, and self-congratulation at Rome was the exact counterpart to that described in the text: “The pillars of her strength were visible and palpable; and she [Rome] surveyed them with exultation from her golden palaces.”

And again, of the assembled prelates; “They separated [from the Council] with complacency and confidence;” and with “mutual congratulations on the peace, unity, and purity of the Apostolic Church.”

PAGE 457

And were their congratulations then, and their triumph, to be long continued? Very different was the predicted purpose of God respecting both them and the cause they had been oppressing.

The next thing that I am called in the prophecy to mark and to explain is, the speedy and wonderful resurrection of THE TWO Witnesses.

“And after the three and a half days the breath of life from God entered into them; and they stood upon their feet.”

But what the need of any explanation of mine to suggest the events that here answered to the prophecy? History speaks for itself.

Not in the compass of the whole ecclesiastical history of Christendom, save and except in the case of the death and resurrection of Christ Himself, is there any such example of the sudden, mighty, and triumphant resuscitation of his cause and Church from a state of deep depression, as was exhibited just after the separation of the 5th Lateran Council, in the protesting voice of Luther, and out-burst of the glorious Reformation.

The sudden contrast forces itself on every writer of history, whether of the Romish Church or Protestant. Take the Popish Annalist Raynaldus. “The fire ill-smothered,” says he, [i. e. by Pope Leo and his Legate’s measures of conciliation and repression,] at the close of 1513 and of 1514, was blown up again by Luther’s bellows, and spread its flames far and wide, more than ever before.

Take the writer before cited from the Encyclopedia Britannica. “Everything was quiet; every heretic exterminated; and the whole Christian world supinely acquiescing in the enormous absurdities inculpated on them [by the Romish Church], when, in 1517, the empire of superstition” received ” its first attack [its death-blow almost] from Martin Luther.”

PAGE 458

Take Mr. Cunninghame; who draws not his vigorous sketch, let it be observed, with a view to prove the coincidence in question, (his own views of the prophecy being different,) but simply as a matter of history: “At the commencement of the xvith century Europe reposed in the deep sleep of spiritual death, under the iron yoke of the Papacy . . . There was none that “moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped:”when, suddenly, in one of the universities of Germany the voice of an obscure monk was heard, the sound of which rapidly filled Saxony, Germany, and Europe itself; shaking the very foundations of the Papal power, and arousing men from the lethargy of ages.”

But does the chronology suit? It was predicted that for three and a half days the Witnesses were to be looked on as dead: in other words, that there was to be the interval of three and a half years between the first recognition of their extinction by the assembled deputies from the states of Christendom, and their resuscitation.

Was this the interval between that memorable day of the ninth session of the Lateran Council, on which the Orator pronounced his paean of triumph over the extinction of heretics and schismatics, and the first and yet more memorable act of protestation by Luther?

Let us calculate. The day of the 9th Session was, as we have seen. May 5, 1514; the day of Luther’s posting up his Theses at Wittenberg (the well known epoch of the Reformation) Oct. 31, 1517. Now from May 5, 1514 to May 5, 1517 are three years: and from May 5, 1517 to October 31 of the same year, 1517,the reckoning in days is as follows;

May 5-31: 27

June: 30

July: 31

August: 31

September: 30

October: 31

in all 180, or half 300 days; that is, just half a year. So that the whole interval is precisely, to a day, three and a half years;

PAGE 459

precisely, to a day, the period predicted in the Apocalyptic prophecy! Oh wonderful prophecy, is the exclamation that again forces itself on my mind! “Oh the depth of the riches of the wisdom and the fore-knowledge of God!”

So then “the breath of life from God entered into the slain Witnesses, and they stood upon their feet.”

1 The figure of a revival, resuscitation, or resurrection, is so natural as well as striking, and so evidently appropriate in the case of Luther and the Witnesses preceding him, that we cannot wonder at its having been perpetually applied in the case, by writers of whatever different creed and sentiments.

Not by way of illustration only, but yet more on account of its beauty and historic interest, I must beg permission to subjoin one exemplification of it, given anticipatively, I may almost say prophetically, 100 years before Luther, by the martyr Huss. We are told that whilst in his lonesome dungeon at Constance, just but a few nights before his martyrdom, he dreamt; and it seemed as if some pictures of Christ, that he had been painting on the walls of his oratory, were effaced by the Pope and the Bishops. The dream afflicted him.

But the next night he dreamed again, and seemed to see painters more in number, and with more of effect, restoring the pictures of Jesus. He told the dream to his friends. “I am no vain dreamer,” he said: “but hold for certain that the image of Christ shall never be effaced. They wish to destroy it: but it shall be painted afresh in the hearts of gospel-preachers better than myself. And I, awaking as it were from the dead, and rising from the grave, shall rejoice with exceeding great joy.”

His fellow-martyr Jerome, in spirit similarly prophetic, named the interval 100 years, after which their memory would be vindicated, their cause triumphant. On turning from

PAGE 460

Huss and Jerome to Pope Adrian, Leo Xth’s successor, we find a Commentator, such as they might have little expected, both on the martyrs’ anticipations, and on the Apocalyptic prophecy. In 1523 he wrote thus, in a Brief addressed to the Diet at Nuremberg: “The heretics Huss and Jerome seem now to be alive again in the person of Luther.”

And indeed both in Bohemia itself, and in England, and in the Piedmontese valleys, the voice thrilled with electric effect; even to a partial revival there, very soon, of the old Hussite, Wicklifiite, and Waldensic witnessings.

There remains but one clause more for notice in the prophetic description. After stating the Witnesses’ revival, and standing upon their feet, it adds; “and great fear

PAGE 461

fell on those that beheld them!” Now it strikes me that there is a distinctiveness in the phraseology here deserving of remark. It is not said, “Great fear fell on them” in the pronominal accusative, with reference to the members of Council just before spoken of as contemplating their dead corpses: but upon “such as beheld them.”

The Lateran Council in fact had separated, and the deputies returned home, a few months before Luther’s Protest. So that the first impression from it was not the same on one and all. At Rome Pope Leo, in his golden palace, incredulous as to the possibility of anything occurring, especially from so mean an origin, to affect his supremacy and power, treated it at first as a mere passing ebullition of feeling and genius in the monk of Wittenberg.

But not so they that were on the spot, and beheld, when, like an electric shock, the voice of the revived gospel-witness thrilled through Germany. Not so, I say, Tetzel, Eck, Miltitz, Aleander. Of these each one, as they entered on the scene, and looked on, trembled in consternation.

For they saw that the very foundation of the whole Papal system was assailed; and that there was a power in the voice and the movement, (even as if from heaven,) that they could not withstand. And soon indeed Pope Leo himself realized the danger. It needs not that I here retrace what has been said before so fully of the subsequent successive steps taken towards the consolidation of the Reformation: the recognition by Luther in their true character, and his consequent rejection, of the Roman Pope and his seven thunders; his intrepid standing up in defense of the gospel before the Emperor and Cardinal at Worms;

PAGE 462

the gospel before the Emperor and Cardinal at Worms; the general revival of gospel-preaching; the ecclesiastical constitution of a pure and reformed Church, and excommunication of the Roman Church as apostate, with the rod of the civil power assisting, throughout electoral Saxony, Prussia, Denmark, Sweden, and other countries.

It is sufficient here to state that at each step of advance, as the revival was confirmed, and the Witnesses stood more firmly on their feet, the fear of those that beheld continued, and increased in anxiety. Not least were their fears excited when, after ten years of vain schemes and agitation to put them down, the Lutheran Reformers proclaimed as it were before the world,—though all unconsciously and unintentionally,—that they were but the Witnesses of Christ resuscitated and risen up again:

I mean when in 1530, just after the memorable Augsburg Council, at which they had presented their Confession of Faith, and been repudiated by the Emperor, they united themselves collectively at Smalcald, under the glorious adopted name of Protestants; an appellation the very same that, according to its Latin etymology, signifies Witnesses.

And here the Angel seems to me to have ceased speaking. (I shall presently have to state the evidence of it.) His sketch of the two Witnesses’ history had been brought down to that very chronological point in the vision prefigurative of the Reformation, at which he first interposed with his retrospective explanatory narrative. What remained of their history would most fitly be given, not retrospectively, or in explanatory narrative, but in the resumption and progress of the Apocalyptic scenic figurations. To these we now proceed. They will form the subject of our next Chapter.