Winners
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In the two scenes of Revelation 11 John is first given a measuring rod and commanded to measure the temple (11:1–2); then he hears a heavenly voice narrating the prophetic career, assassination, and resurrection of those whom the voice calls “my two witnesses” (11:3–13). This section corresponds to the visions of the 144,000 and the international multitude of Revelation 7 in its placement (between the sixth and seventh of a series), theme (protection of the church amid suffering), and twofold structure. The visions of Revelation 11, however, nuance their portrait of God’s protective care with greater complexity. The measuring of the sanctuary (11:1) and the invincibility of the two witnesses until their testifying task is done (11:5) reaffirm the promise of Revelation 7: God will let nothing separate his people from his love. However, the prohibition against measuring the outer court, leaving it vulnerable to trampling by the Gentiles (11:2), and the beast’s slaughter of the witnesses (11:7) show that God promises not to spare us from all suffering but to secure our faith fast amid suffering.
The New Testament redefinition of the sanctuary of God as the people of God, expounded by Paul (1 Cor. 3:16–17; Eph. 2:20–22) and Peter (1 Peter 2:4–10; 4:14–17), has already been glimpsed in Revelation. That glimpse occurred in the promise: “He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he will not go out from it anymore; and I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name” (Rev. 3:12). The identification becomes more explicit when we are told that the beast will blaspheme God’s “name and His tabernacle, that is, those who dwell in heaven” (13:6).
The other view contends that the unmeasured outer court and the “holy city” that it represents, trampled under Gentile feet for fortytwo months, provide a contrasting perspective on the same true church that is pictured in the measured sanctuary. In the paradoxical way in which Revelation’s visions so often describe the church, Christ’s holy temple-city is secure and vulnerable: secured from apostasy and divine wrath by the power and grace of the Lamb but vulnerable to attack through persecution by the world’s noncovenant peoples. Although elsewhere in the Bible the title “the holy city” refers to the physical metropolis that was the capital of Israel and center of Jewish worship, in the Book of Revelation “the holy city” is the new Jerusalem, the bride of the Lamb (Rev. 21:2; 22:19)