What does Revelation 11:9 mean?
At times in the past, people doubted some of the incidents depicted in Revelation, claiming that there was no way for the "entire world" to literally see something as it happened. Today, through the media of television and hand-held devices, people can follow events around the globe in real time. It is not hard to believe, therefore, that for three and a half days, at least some people from virtually all tribes and languages and nations will gaze at the dead bodies of the two witnesses.Their morbid delight at viewing the dead bodies is matched only by their wicked refusal to grant the bodies of the two witnesses burial in a tomb. The people demonstrate by their despicable delight in the death of the two witnesses that "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick" (Jeremiah 17:9). When Jesus hung on the cross and would soon die, "the rulers scoffed at him, saying, 'He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One'" (Luke 23:35). The soldiers also mocked Him. However, both Jesus' adversaries and the two witnesses' adversaries would soon learn that evil cannot triumph over good.
Revelation 11:3–14 follows on the heels of a brief assertion that the Gentiles will possess the temple's outer court and trample Jerusalem for forty-two months. We learn also that God will authorize two witnesses to prophesy during those forty-two months. Here we gain information about the two witnesses' ministry, what happens to them, and God's immediate response. The passage ends by alerting us to the fact that the second woe has ended, but the third woe is coming soon.
This chapter continues the interlude between the sixth and seventh trumpet judgments. John received a measuring rod and was told to measure the temple, the altar, and the worshipers. However, he was told not to measure the court outside the temple, because the Gentiles would overrun it for three and a half years. During that time, two divinely authorized witnesses would prophesy. They would have power to summon fire from heaven and to strike the earth with plagues. At the end of their testimony the beast from the pit will kill them and leave their bodies in a street in Jerusalem. But, three and a half days later, God will resurrect their bodies and draw them up to heaven. At that time a powerful earthquake will level a tenth of Jerusalem and kill seven thousand people. When the seventh trumpet sounds, loud voices in heaven proclaim Jesus as the possessor of the world's kingdoms, and the twenty-four elders praise Jesus as the Lord God Almighty who will begin to reign. He will judge the dead but reward His servants. The chapter ends with the opening of the temple in heaven.
