The Two Witnesses beyond the Sixth Trumpet

Abstract

The two witnesses of Revelation baffled interpreters for a long time and kept frustrating them for reasons related either to the book’s approach or to prioritizing, in interpretation, external sources over Revelation itself. The article dialogues with expositors of historicist tradition and shows that, if there must be progress in understanding, the structure and interconnectivity of Revelation must be prioritized. The claim substantiated throughout the paper is that the narrative of the two witnesses has two parts: historical (Rev 11:3–6) and eschatological (vv. 7–12), the latter of which receives new meaning when interpreted from an end-time perspective and as a replica of Jesus’s own destiny, which the two witnesses closely follow.

Keywords

• Revelation 11
• two witnesses
• sixth trumpet
• historicism