1 Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff and was told, “Go and measure the temple of God and the altar, and count the number of worshipers there. 2 But exclude the courtyard outside the temple. Do not measure it, because it has been given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for 42 months. 3 And I will empower my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” 4 These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.
The measuring rod is consistent with Ezekiel measuring the Temple. From the Topical index of biblehub.com: “Measures in the Bible often carry symbolic and prophetic meanings. In the visions of Ezekiel and Revelation, measurements are used to convey divine order and perfection. Ezekiel 40-42 describes the measurements of the future temple, symbolizing God's precise and holy standards.” Similarly, Revelation 21:15-17 details the measurements of the New Jerusalem, representing the perfection and completeness of God's eternal kingdom.” The people God is measuring shows a level of divine order and perfection.
Witnesses are those that are professing the Word of God to others. They will prophecy means to speak the words of judgement against a people. There were two groups of people in the 1100s in Europe that transcribed Bibles, and were missionaries to others. The Cathars/Albigenses, in France, and the Valdens/Waldensians in the mountains of Italy. From the Book of Two Texts - the largest surviving work of Cathar literature: "Since many persons are hampered in rightly understand the truth, to enlighten them, to stimulate those who do have right understanding, and also for the delight of my soul, I have made it my purpose to explain our true faith by evidence from the Holy Scriptures and with eminently suitable arguments, invoking to my efforts the aid of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."
They prophecy in sackcloth, they are in mourning, poverty and are destitute. The Catholic Church was well established at this time and was trying to eradicate both groups of people from testifying about God.
The meaning of lampstands is explained in Chapter 2 when Jesus describes the churches. The Cathars and Waldensians were not only churches, but transcribers of the Bible, showing they were also olive trees. Olive oil was used as anointing oil. Taking the word of God (olive tree) and pressing into the word as you would press olives produces an anointing of the spirit of God upon your life. When the oil is lit as in a lampstand the light of God shines for others. There are good websites and youtube videos on both these groups of people, they are very inspiring! For simplicity I’ll leave that for you to look into and move on.
The 42 months/1260 days is solved in verse 11 by using 3 ½ days.
Wikipedia: Medieval Inquisition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Inquisition "The Medieval Inquisition was a series of Inquisitions (Catholic Church bodies charged with suppressing heresy) from around 1184, including the Episcopal Inquisition (1184–1230s) and later the Papal Inquisition (1230s). The Medieval Inquisition was established in response to movements considered apostate or heretical to Roman Catholicism, in particular Catharism and Waldensians in Southern France and Northern Italy. These were the first movements of many inquisitions that would follow.
The Cathars were first noted in the 1140s in Southern France, and the Waldensians around 1170 in Northern Italy. Before this point, individual heretics such as Peter of Bruis had often challenged the Church. However, the Cathars were the first mass organization in the second millennium that posed a serious threat to the authority of the Church. This article covers only these early inquisitions, not the Roman Inquisition of the 16th century onwards, or the somewhat different phenomenon of the Spanish Inquisition of the late 15th century, which was under the control of the Spanish monarchy using local clergy. The Portuguese Inquisition of the 16th century and various colonial branches followed the same pattern."
Between 1022 and 1163, the Cathars were condemned by eight local church councils, the last of which, held at Tours, declared that all Albigenses should be put into prison and have their property confiscated. The Third Lateran Council of 1179 repeated the condemnation. The Catholic Church viewed the Waldensians as unorthodox, and in 1184 at the Synod of Verona, under the auspices of Pope Lucius III, they were excommunicated. Pope Innocent III went even further during the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, officially denouncing the Waldensians as heretics. The Third Lateran Council excommunicated the Cathars and mercenary groups that were plaguing Europe at the time.
worldhistory.org https://www.worldhistory.org/Medieval_Church/ Some of those who objected to the policies of the Church joined alternate religious sects and attempted to live peacefully in their own communities. The best-known of these were the Cathars of Southern France who, while they interacted with the Catholic communities they lived near or in, had their own services, rituals, and belief system. These kinds of communities were routinely condemned by the Church and destroyed, their members massacred, and whatever lands they had confiscated as Church property.
Cathars. Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained. 2008. http://www.unexplainedstuff.com/Religious-Phenomena/Christian-Mystery-Schools-Cults-Heresies-Cathars.html Since most of the Albigensian communities were first sacked, then burned, their records and their libraries were destroyed. Because the testimony of exactly what the Cathars really believed was wrung out under extreme pain from those who survived the massacres and endless sieges long enough to be tortured and burned at the stake, it has been difficult to gain access to their true belief structure until recent times. Research now indicates that far from the devil-worshipping heretics that Pope Innocent III decreed warranted extermination, the Albigenses were devout, chaste, tolerant Christian humanists, who loathed the material excesses of the medieval church.
(Wikipedia) By the 12th century, organized groups of dissidents, such as the Waldensians and Cathars, were beginning to appear in the towns and cities of newly urbanized areas. In western Mediterranean France, one of the most urbanized areas of Europe at the time, the Cathars grew to represent a popular mass movement,[55][56] and the belief was spreading to other areas. One such area was Lombardy, which by the 1170s was sustaining a community of Cathars.[57] The Cathar movement was seen by some as a reaction against the corrupt and earthly lifestyles of the clergy. It has also been viewed as a manifestation of dissatisfaction with papal power.
The Cathar movement occasionally mingled with Waldensianism. However, it was distinct from it, for while Waldensians agreed with the Cathars in their opposition to the Catholic hierarchy and emphasis on poverty and simplicity, they generally accepted most Catholic teachings. Both movements eventually came under violent persecution, but the main energies of the Church were directed against Catharism, which was both the more radical and the more numerous of the two sects.
Massacre at Béziers: The Crusaders captured the small village of Servian and then headed for Béziers, arriving on 21 July 1209. Under the command of Arnaud Amalric,[88] they started to besiege the city, calling on the Catholics within to come out, and demanding that the Cathars surrender.[89] Neither group did as commanded. The city fell the following day when an abortive sortie was pursued back through the open gates.[90] The entire population was slaughtered and the city burned to the ground. It was later alleged that Amalric, when asked how to distinguish Cathars from Catholics, responded, "Kill them all! God will know his own." Strayer doubts that Amalric actually said this, but maintains that the statement captures the "spirit" of the Crusaders, who killed nearly every man, woman, and child in the town. Amalric and Milo wrote in a letter to the Pope, claimed that the Crusaders "put to the sword almost 20,000 people". (see Wikipedia Albigensian Crusade for additional attacks from the popes until the 1200s)
With the military phase of the campaign against the Cathars now primarily at an end, the Inquisition was established under Pope Gregory IX in 1234 to uproot heretical movements, including the remaining Cathars. Operating in the south at Toulouse, Albi, Carcassonne and other towns during the whole of the 13th century, and a great part of the 14th, it succeeded in crushing Catharism as a popular movement and driving its remaining adherents underground.
The Waldensians were more adherent to the Catholic ways, so had not been so severely attacked. They were declared heretics in 1215, but managed to stay out of the heat of persecution until the 1500s.
(Wikipedia) Outside the Piedmont, the Waldenses joined the local Protestant churches in Bohemia, France, and Germany. After they came out of seclusion and reports were made of sedition on their part, French King Francis I on 1 January 1545 issued the "Arrêt de Mérindol", and assembled an army against the Waldensians of Provence. The leaders in the 1545 massacres were Jean Maynier d'Oppède, First President of the parliament of Provence, and the military commander Antoine Escalin des Aimars, who was returning from the Italian Wars with 2,000 veterans, the Bandes de Piémont. Deaths in the Massacre of Mérindol ranged from hundreds to thousands, depending on the estimates, and several villages were devastated.
The treaty of 5 June 1561 granted amnesty to the Protestants of the Valleys, including liberty of conscience and freedom to worship. Prisoners were released and fugitives permitted to return home, but despite this treaty, the Vaudois, with the other French Protestants, still suffered during the French Wars of Religion in 1562–1598.
As early as 1631, Protestant scholars began to regard the Waldensians as early forerunners of the Reformation, in a manner similar to the way the followers of John Wycliffe and Jan Hus, also persecuted by authorities, were viewed.
Although the Waldensian church was granted some rights and freedoms under French King Henry IV, with the Edict of Nantes in 1598, persecution rose again in the seventeenth century, with an extermination of the Waldensians attempted by the Duke of Savoy in 1655. This led to the exodus and dispersion of the Waldensians to other parts of Europe and even to the Western Hemisphere.
5 And if anyone would harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes. If anyone would harm them, this is how he is doomed to be killed.
Here fire is divine vengeance, words of truth that burn and condemn. See Jeremiah 5:14 “Therefore this is what the LORD God of Hosts says: “Because you have spoken this word, I will make My words a fire in your mouth and this people the wood it consumes.”
In the 1300s we have the start of divine justice. See these bullets by a google search of St Anthony’s Fire Cathars:
St. Anthony's Fire as a disease
St. Anthony's Fire as a period of persecution
6 They have the power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire.
There was the great famine of 1315-1322, killing 10-25% of the population. The Black Death – Bubonic Plague from 1346 to 1353 was the result of unclean and poisoned wells, hence waters to blood. Death estimates between 25-50 million people.
7 And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them,
We have here the first definition of the beast described later as the red beast of chapter 17, which is the red dragon in chapter 12 and 20.
Revelation 12:3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. Revelation 20:2 And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, 3 and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while.
Later in Revelation 17:3 And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. 8 The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to rise from the bottomless pit and go to destruction. 12 And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received royal power, but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour, together with the beast.
The interpretation of the Red Beast is given in chapter 17. The red dragon who becomes the beast will attack the remaining Waldensians in the 1500s.
8 and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified.
Sodom in the Bible were the godless, men who were ruled by their flesh. Egypt in the Bible were pagans and worshipped many gods that The Most High God found as an abomination. France would later be a nation of atheists, and Rome would be home of the Catholic/Jesuit cult ruled by once-hidden paganism that is now being exposed.
9 For three and a half days some from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb, 10 and those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and make merry and exchange presents, because these two prophets had been a torment to those who dwell on the earth.
At the Lateran Council in 1179, Popes forbid mass and burials for those that were labeled as “heretics” by the papacy and were martyred at the hands of the Catholic Church. Another decree was issued on 1254 that forbade burial to not only “heretics” but also those who believed them or defended them. They left the bodies out in the open to remind others of the consequences of siding against the Catholic Church.
11 But after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them. 12 Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here!” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies watched them. 13 And at that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. 14 The second woe has passed; behold, the third woe is soon to come.
Three and a half days is the 1260 and the 42 months at the beginning of the chapter. The Synod at Verona in 1184 where the Cathars were excommunicated is the first of the oppression of the churches of God. New life was breathed in all believers 350 years later when the Act of Supremacy from England in 1534 declared common men able to read the Bible in their own language. The king of England even required a new Book of Prayer in churches so that the congregation could participate and understand the services. The cloud in this instance is like the cloud of witnesses as described in Hebrews 12:1. The great city is the nations of Europe, which we will look at in chapter 13. The Act of Supremacy was also the catalyst for England to break away from the rule of the Catholic authority over government by establishing an independent Church of England. The seven thousand people killed were the seven provinces of the Netherlands that signed the Union of Utrecht in 1579, and the Dutch revolt of 1581. The grip of the Catholic Church and the Beast had lost some of their nations of authority. Even those that stayed under Catholic dominion were starting to see the truth of God and give him glory!
15 Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” 16 And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, 17 saying, “We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. 18 The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.” 19 Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail.
Here we have the phrase “begun to reign” which looking at the Strong’s interpretation, there should not be the word begun. We have the beginning of the reign of Christ in Chapter 5. Here’s the KJV version of this verse: Saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned.
The dead here are those dead in Christ, as Paul talks about in Romans 6 and 8. They are being judged by the law of Christ because believers now have the word in their own language spoken at their church services. They can speak the words of truth over others. Now the common people have the word, both small and great, and they will be rewarded with all the promises held in the Bible for believers. God’s temple was opened, the word will be sent out instead of kept hidden in the small communities like the Cathars and Waldensians had to do.
There was a series of wars fought in Europe called the Wars of Religion because of the stance of the English government and the Protestant Reformation that we will delve into for Chapter 12.
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