The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come, and the time to judge the dead and to reward Your servants the prophets, and the saints and those who fear Your name, both the small and the great, and to destroy those who are destroying the earth.  Rev. 11:18.
 
    This verse offers a summary of the final events of earth's history.  They have five main parts or aspects.  The nations are angry and the wrath of God has come, as well as the time to judge the dead, reward the righteous, and remove those destroying the earth.  This text predicts that, just before the end, the nations will be angry.  And we may be entering into just such a time.  It is harder and harder to find common ground among the conflicting political agendas.  The new world order proclaimed after the Gulf War of 1991 has turned into a new world disorder.
 
    God responds in kind to the anger of the nations.  The "wrath of God" here is a nutshell summary of the seven last plagues of Revelation 16 (see Rev. 14:10 and 15:1).  The plagues soften up the forces of evil, preparing the way for the final victory of God.  The Lord's final word in this trumpet is that of judgment.  The judgment will make right the wrongs of this world.  It will defeat oppression and rescue and vindicate their victims.  And it will be, not a time of pointless violence, but one of setting things straight.
 
    I remember a meeting of secular Bible scholars.  Many in the group studied the Bible for a living, but no longer believed that it was the answer to the great problems of life.  In their comments they assumed that the Bible's promises of judgment and resurrection merely reflected the cultural hopes of the ancients.
 
    But that day their assumptions received a challenge from an unexpected direction.  A hard-smoking, hard-drinking German scholar took objection to the proceedings.  He protested that it was a waste of time to study the Bible merely as an academic exercise.  "No matter how you paint it, the Bible is right about the injustices of this world.  If this life is all we have to look forward to, nothing will ever change.  If there is no such thing as judgment or resurrection, there will never be any justice in this world.  The Bible writers believed that there was a judgment to come and a resurrection, and that is the only hope we have."
 
    The resurrection and the judgment tell us that someday God will set everything right.  While His justice may not be visible to many eyes just yet, we are nearer than ever to the time spoken of in this text.
 
Lord, I look forward to the day when You will correct all the injustices of this world.  Help me anticipate that time by doing the right thing today.

The seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven which were speaking, "The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign for ever and ever."  And the twenty-four elders who are sitting on their thrones before God, fell upon their faces and worshipped God, saying, "We give thanks to You, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, because You have taken hold of Your great power and begun to reign."  Rev. 11:15-17.
 
    One day the father of an extremely wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the intent of showing his son how poor people live.  They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what most would consider a very poor family.
 
    On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, "How was the trip?"
 
    "It was great, Dad."
 
    "Did you see how poor people live?" the father inquired.
 
    "Oh, yeah," the son replied.
 
    "So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?"
 
    "I saw that we have one dog and they had four," the son answered.  "We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden, and they have a creek that has no end.  We have imported lanterns in our garden, and they have the stars at night.  Our patio reaches to the front yard, and they have the whole horizon.  We have a small piece of land to live on, and they have fields that go beyond our sight.  We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.  We buy our food, but they grow theirs.  We have walls around our property to protect us, but they have friends to protect them."
 
    The boy's father was speechless.  Then his son added, "Thanks, Dad, for showing me how poor we are."
 
    In Revelation 4:9 we noticed the 24 elders giving continual thanks to God for Creation and for His mighty acts of salvation.  In our text for today the elders are again worshipping and are offering thanks, but this time the object of their thankfulness is more specific.  They praise God for His end-time invasion of the kingdom of this world, and for replacing it with His own kingdom, grounded in the mighty acts of Christ.  When we fully grasp what Christ has done for us, it changes our attitude toward everything.  This is one of the major functions of the book of Revelation.  By raising our perspective from our own little world to the grandeur of God's universe, we become aware of how deeply grateful we should be.  It's all in how you look at it!
 
Lord, whenever I am tempted to think that I have been shortchanged in this life, remind me of the treasure I have in Jesus Christ.

  And in that hour there was a great earthquake, and tenth of the city fell.  Seven thousand people were killed by the earthquake, and the remnant became afraid and gave glory to the God of heaven.  The second woe has gone away, the third woe is coming quickly.  Rev. 11:13, 14.
 
    The word "remnant" in this passage anticipates the use of the same word in Revelation 12:17.  I believe it also foreshadows the work of the 144,000 in Revelation 14.  Let me explain.  Both the remnant (Rev. 12:7) and the 144,000 (Rev. 14:1-5) are the same group.  And both concepts echo Joel 2:32, in which a remnant on Mount Zion calls on the name of the Lord.  In Revelation 14 the 144,000, represented by an angel, proclaim: "Fear God and give glory to Him" (Rev. 14:7).  Now, it is possible that the remnant of our text is merely "afraid."  But I think it is more likely that they are responding to the message of Revelation 14:7.  The remnant of Revelation 11:13 fear God and give Him glory, just as the first angel calls on the world to do.
 
    There are at least three types of fear.  The first is the fear of financial ruin.  I remember March 14, 2000.  On that day the financial markets in the Untied States reached a monumental peak.  Many stocks and mutual funds had risen hundreds of percent from where they had been in 1995.  But on that March 14a slide began that lasted nearly three years, wiping out about half of all the money invested in the stock market.  A magazine lamented, "Say goodbye to the all-powerful venture capitalists and dot-com millionaires and hello to bankruptcy lawyers, turnaround specialists, and liquidators."  The good news is that many failed investors found their true value, not in money and possessions, but in the kingdom of God.
 
    A second type of fear is concern about physical harm.  And such fear is legitimate.  No amount of healthy living and safe driving can guarantee that earthquake, disease, criminal elements, or something else will not harm us.  But God has promised to be with us when we pass through the "valley of the shadow of death" (Ps. 23:4, NIV).  Knowing that He is in control gives us the confidence to live one day at a time, savoring each moment as a gift 
 
    I believe that the third type of fear is the one illustrated in this text.  It is the most important kind of fear, one that leads us to God.  The Lord can use our natural fear (as when we confront things too big for us to control--such as a great earthquake) to lead us to an awareness of His presence and a desire to be right with Him.  Paul talks about working out our salvation "with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12, NIV).  Godly fear will lead us not only to a recognition of His presence, but to the appropriate awe and reverence.
 
Lord, help me to have a healthy appreciation of the fact that You are always watching me.  I want to be accountable to You in everything I do.

  And they [the two witnesses] heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, "Come up here."  And they ascended to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies saw them.  Rev. 11:12.
 
    One of the great issues of interpretation in Revelation is the identity of the two witnesses in chapter 11.  Whoever they are, they have divine authority: they "prophesy" 1260 days in sackcloth (Rev. 11:3).  Scripture also calls them the two prophets (verse 10).  They deliver the prophetic message that John is required to "prophesy again" (Rev. 10:11).
 
    In the Jewish legal system something had to be established by at least two witnesses in order to be accepted as true (Deut. 19:15).  It was a good system because the two witnesses had to describe the incident separately in ways that agreed with each other.  The court would not take it seriously if only one person said that so-and-so did it.  The infamous O. J. Simpson trial was frustrating in that nothing could be established beyond a reasonable doubt since there were no witnesses.  So the image of two witnesses suggests that the message is both serious and true (Rev. 11:3).
 
    Who are these witnesses?  Scripture depicts them as olive trees and as the lampstands of the sanctuary (verse 4).  The description reminds us of the time of Zerubbabel, when the Jews were restoring the Temple after the exile to Babylon (Zech. 4).  So the two witness are symbols of the power of the Holy Spirit to enlighten the earth through God's Word and His people.  John further portrays the witnesses in terms of Moses and Elijah (Rev. 11:5, 6), who represented God despite great opposition.  Although they suffer for the message, they are not powerless.
 
    Students of Revelation through the centuries have offered two main explanations of who the witnesses are.  The first is that they represent the Bible, the Old and New Testament (also reflecting the law [Moses] and prophets [Elijah] of the Jewish cannon).  The Old Testament scriptures bear witness to Jesus (see John 5:39, 40; 19:35, 37).  So the concept of two witnesses to Jesus could be a reference to the Scriptures.
 
    Equal evidence exists for a second concept.  The presence of Temple imagery points to the church, often referred to as the temple of God in the New Testament (1 Cor. 3:17; 1 Peter 2:1-10).  The church on earth is the light of the world (Matt. 5:14-16), because witnessing is the church's primary task (Luke 24:48; Acts 1:8).
 
    In Revelation Jesus is both the faithful witness (Rev. 1:5) and the Word of God (Rev. 19:13).  So the options are two sides of the same coin.  Either way the point of the passage is the power of God's end-time message to change the world in spite of great opposition.
 
Lord, help me to keep my eye focused on the mission You have given Your church.  Help me to use Your Word to make a difference in my world today.

  Those who live on the earth will rejoice over them, celebrate, and send gifts to one another because these prophets had tormented those who live on the earth.  But after three and a half days the breath of life from God entered into them and they stood up on their feet.  Great fear fell on those who saw them.  Rev. 11:10, 11.
 
    In April of 2004 I was flying from Hong Kong to San Francisco.  A couple hours into the flight I took a casual look at the flight data screen.  My head snapped forward with amazement.  The screen said that our plane was traveling 775 miles per hour, well past the speed of sound.  Thanks to a 200-mile-per-hour tailwind, we had smoothly broken the sound barrier.
 
    On October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager prepared for his ninth flight in the experimental rocket plane Bell X-1.  Each previous flight had edged closer to Mach 1, the never-crossed barrier beyond which human beings would fly faster than the speed of sound.  It was dangerous, he knew.  A British test pilot had perished when his aircraft disintegrated at Mach 0.94.  Yeager, the fearless test pilot who would one day pilot a rocket plane out of the earth's atmosphere, climbed down into the X-1 as it lay in the airborne belly of the huge mother ship, a B-29.  He snapped the cockpit cover shut using a sawed-off broom.
 
    At 20,000 feet that rocket plane dropped out of the bomb bay with a jolt.  All four rockets fired, causing the plane to shake violently.  The Mach needle edged up past 0.965, and then it went off the scale.  Thunderstruck, Yeager realized that he was flying supersonic.  "It was as smooth as a baby's bottom: Grandma could be sitting up there sipping lemonade," he said later.  His X-1 had accelerated to Mach 1.06, or 700 miles per hour.  He half didn't believe it--until the tracking crew ran up and reported hearing the world's first sonic boom, a sound that marked the end of the Wright Brothers' era and the beginning of the space age.
 
    According to our text, the emotions of "those who live on the earth" shifted suddenly from great rejoicing to great fear.  In both cases the emotions were related to the future.  When the two witnesses were dead, people foresaw no "torment" in their future.  But the resurrection of the witnesses brought great fear.  God's enemies had no idea what would happen to them.
 
    Today we routinely break the sound barrier and hardly notice it, but Yeager had no way of knowing it would be that smooth.  In an act of great courage he faced his fears and tried.  Those who are on God's side don't have to be afraid of the future.  We already know that the "sonic boom" at the end of time will not harm those who are sealed.
 
Lord, thank You for the assurance that we have nothing to fear for the future except we forget how You have led us in the past.

                        And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.  And some from every people and tribe and language and nation will gaze on their bodies for three and a half days, and they will not permit their bodies to be placed in a tomb.  Rev. 8, 9.
 
    At 4:00 p.m. on October 27, 1962, President John F. Kennedy met with his military leaders.  The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended that the U.S. attack Cuba within 36 hours and destroy the Soviet missiles that aerial photography had detected there.  The CIA assured the leaders that the Soviets had not yet delivered the nuclear warheads to arm those missiles.  What they did not know at the time was that the Soviets already had 162 nuclear warheads in Cuba.  Fidel Castro had even recommended to Nikita Khrushchev the use of nuclear weapons if the U.S. invaded.  Events were spiraling out of control.
 
    Khrushchev had sized up the young president Kennedy as a weakling, considering him full of talk but timid in action.  Knowing that getting nuclear missiles into Cuba would change the balance of power in an instant, he calculated that Kennedy would bluster but in the end do nothing.  He was wrong.
 
    Not only did Kennedy challenge Cuba, he threw down the glove to Khrushchev's own Soviet Union.  And he did it in spite of great danger to his people.  When he asked Walter Sweeny, chief of the Tactical Air Command, if he was certain he could take out all the missiles, Sweeny replied, "We have the finest fighter force in the world; we have trained for this kind of operation, and they would destroy the great majority.  But there might be one or two or five left."
 
    On October 27 Khrushchev gave no sign of backing down.  Kennedy's advisors had split between those who wanted to attack and those who thought they should negotiate.  At the last minute Kennedy took up an offer from Khrushchev to withdraw the missiles if the U.S. promised not to invade Cuba.  Worried that war might break out in the six hours it took to encode and transmit a message from the Kremlin to the White House, Khrushchev decided to broadcast his response to Kennedy on Moscow public radio.
 
    The two witnesses in the book of Revelation seemed weak and helpless to their enemies.  Evil is often emboldened by a "turn the other cheek" mentality.  But those who assert their power and position against God's people in this life miscalculate as surely as the Soviet premier did in 1962.  The book of Revelation teaches us that the triumph of evil is always short-lived.  In the end God will vindicate His people in the sight of all who have despised and abused them (Rev. 20:7-10).
 
Lord, give me the patience to wait for Your vindication.

  And when their [the two witnesses'] testimony is finished, the beast who comes up from the abyss will make war with them and kill them.  And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.  And some from every people and tribe and language and nation will gaze on their bodies for three and a half days, and they will not permit their bodies to be placed in a tomb.  Those who live on the earth will rejoice over them, celebrate, and send gifts to one another because these prophets had tormented those who live on the earth.  But after three and a half days the breath of life from God entered into them and they stood up on their feet.  Great fear fell on those who saw them.  Rev. 11:7-11.
 
    After the close of the 1200 days a dying world receives a final message.  The abyss is the home of demons, the place where God confines them (Luke 8:31).  So the beast from the abyss is either Satan of some evil power controlled by Satan.  Around the time of the French Revolution, many people saw the events of their day forecast in this text.  They believed that the attack on the two witnesses represented the atheist onslaught against the Bible during the revolution.
 
    Rejection is painful, especially when you care deeply about those who spurn you.  In ancient times people considered it the ultimate rejection to the refused burial (1 Kings 21:23, 24; Jer. 8:1, 2 and 14:16; Ps. 79:2, 3) after one's death.  And not only were the two witnesses left lying in the street, the wicked celebrated their humiliation be sending each other gifts, as the Jews did after their deliverance in the time of Esther (Esther 9:19, 22).
 
    But God reverses this shame by breathing the breath of life back into the two witnesses.  Their resurrection fills their enemies with great fear.  One of the consequences of the French Revolution was a great revival of interest in the Bible.  The great Bible societies organized during the following decades.  So while the greatest attack against the Bible occurred in the 1700s, the 1800s saw the Word spread more widely than at any time in history.
 
    It is interesting how enemies can become united in their common opposition to God's people.  Lifelong enemies, Pilate and Herod, reconciled through their rejection of Christ (Luke 23:12).  Sometimes parents are more willing to see their children become secular, or even criminals, than to join some other denomination.  Nothing brings people together like opposition to God and His people, and that will certainly be the case in the last days.
 
Lord, I want to seek the kind of unity that draws people to You, unity in love and caring concern, not unity in opposition to others.

 And when their testimony is finished, the beast who comes up from the abyss will make war with them and kill them.  Rev. 11:7.
 
    The concept of "testimony" has two basic meanings in the book of Revelation.  It has the connotation of sharing one's faith, of telling others what Jesus has done for you and for the human race as a whole.  But it also has the basic meaning of martyrdom, of witnessing for Christ even in the face of threat and death.
 
    In a crisis people become martyrs because living without Jesus is more to be feared than dying with Him.  The martyrs so cherished what Jesus had done in their lives that they could not conceive of living out of relationship with Him.  When forced to make the choice, therefore, they opted for death rather than deny Him.  And "the blood of martyrs became seed."  No witness to Christ is greater than that of one who calmly goes to death instead of turning away from Him. 
 
    As I wrote these words, I have just completed a series of meetings for the public in Singapore.  Local believers had been broadcasting recordings of my Revelation lectures on the radio there.  When they advertised the meetings, hundreds of listeners came and wanted to hear more.
 
    It was fascinating to meet people from such a wide variety of backgrounds.  Christians from every denomination in Singapore were there, hungry for a deeper understanding of Revelation and of Jesus.  Secular people, tired of an endless round of working, eating, and shopping, came looking for meaning in their lives. Hindus and Buddhists fascinated me by their openness to a deeper walk with God and eagerness to learn more about Jesus.  In the process I encountered impressive elements of Indian and Chinese wisdom.  We must not assume that people who have never heard of Jesus are necessarily ignorant.
 
    I did not undergo martyrdom at the close of the meetings.  Those who attended rejoiced in a deeper understanding both of Jesus and of the puzzling symbols in Revelation.  I experienced all the joy of sharing my faith without the pain of the martyrs.  My own life had been energized by contact with a large group of people who drank in every word and applied it to their lives eagerly.
 
    Although genuine testimony in behalf of Jesus can cost us our reputations, our jobs, and even our lives, it always leaves the world a better place.  To know Jesus is to know peace and to fill the emptiness that afflicts life without Him.  It is a message worth dying for.
 
Lord, I want to know the Truth that is worth dying for.  Give me a peace and a joy today that I cannot resist sharing with those I meet.

  If anyone wishes to harm them, fire comes out of their mouths and consumes their enemies.  If anyone wishes to harm them, that is the way he must be put to death.  These have the authority to lock up heaven in order that it might not rain during the days of their prophesying.  And they have authority over the waters, to turn them into blood, and to strike the earth with every kind of plague whenever they want.  Rev. 11:5, 6.
 
    At Pentecost God empowered the church with prophetic gifts (Acts 2:17, 18).  The apostles exercised those gifts in conjunction with impressive signs and wonders (Acts 2:43; 5:12-16; 6:8; 14:3).  Such events served as vehicles to draw attention to the gospel (Acts 3:6-12; 8:6; 7; 9:34, 35; 19:10-20).  And parts of the world still have miraculous interventions accompanying the spread of the gospel.
 
    In the Western church today, on the other hand, miracles rarely happen.  And those that we do experience tend to be fairly trivial, not on the scale of the biblical record.  Some have reinterpreted the Bible to suggest that God stopped the flow of miracles after the completion of the canon.  But this text and others (such as Eph. 4:11-13) seem to assume that supernatural gifts will continue until the end of the age.  History and international experience suggest God is still powerfully active wherever it will make a positive difference.
 
    One possible reason for the lack of miracles in the Western world is secularization.  The skeptical nature of Western thought picks miracles apart and attempts to show that they are the products of manipulation or wishful thinking.  If a true prophet were to arise in the Western church right now, most believers would probably reject him or her on principle.  The Western church, therefore, has a lot in common with the compromised Christianity of cities such as Laodicea, Thyatira, and Sardis, which were comfortable with their situation in the world.  Jesus did not do miracles in Nazareth because they found Him too familiar to take seriously (Matt. 13:57, 58).
 
    Another explanation for the lack of miracles in today's world is the sovereignty of God.  In the Bible miracles tend to appear most frequently on the cutting edge of His new initiatives, especially in relation to spreading the gospel in new areas.  Miracles are more likely to occur when believers are breaking new ground than when they are self-absorbed with their comfort this side of paradise.  Only when the church is prepared to challenge society with the claims of Christ will we witness the power of God in its biblical fullness.
 
Lord, I do not wish to get ahead of Your plans for this world.  But whenever I am hindering the work You would like to accomplish in my community, do whatever it takes to get my attention.  I choose to follow Your lead wherever it takes me.

    "And I will give to my two witnesses even that they will prophesy for twelve hundred and sixty days, dressed in sackcloth."  These are the two olive trees and the two lamps which stand before the Lord of the earth.  Rev. 11:3, 4.
 
    The identity of the two witnesses is one of he most disputed issues in the book of Revelation.  But whoever they are, one thing is clear.  They represent the message of the gospel, a message that God intends will spread throughout the earth before the end comes (Matt. 24:14; Rev. 11:11, 12; 14:6, 7).  John portrays the two witnesses as standing all alone, challenging the wrongs of their day and representing God in the face of great opposition.
 
    We too sometimes find ourselves called to stand alone for God.  Such occasions are not pleasant.  Most of us prefer to be part of the "in" crowd, to be accepted in a group that believes and lives the way we do.  But in hard times that may not be the case.  The good news is that, as we make disciples for Jesus, our lonely influence multiplies and helps many others to receive Him in spite of the difficulties that following Christ can bring in this world.
 
    In 1870 a Hindu Chuchra named Charles Ditt converted to Christ.  The Chuchras, a subgroup among the untouchables of India, are part of the lowest caste among the Hindus.  In places people treat them as of less worth than some animals.  Charles Ditt added to his lowly caste position the social stigma of Christianity.  Many Indians regard Christian converts as traitors to their country.
 
    Ditt faced considerable persecution as he carried the message of Jesus Christ with him from village to village.  In 11 years, however, more than 500 Chuchras became Christians in response to his ministry.  By 1900 more than half of his caste had converted to Christ, and by 1915 all but a few hundred members professed the Christian faith.  Certainly Ditt no longer stood alone in his relationship with Christ.
 
    In today's world God calls all of us to be witnesses for Jesus Christ.  Three out of four people in our world do not believe in Jesus as their personal Savior, and half of the people in the world have yet to hear about Him in a meaningful way.  While as individuals we can do little about the billions, we can each reach out to the one or two lost people closest to us.  Even then we cannot know ahead of time which one will prove to be a Charles Ditt, someone specially gifted by God to reach large numbers for Christ.
 
    The work of God will be completed under His supervision and in His time.  Our personal part is to sense His direction and His call each day.
 
Lord, lead me to someone who needs You, or direct them to me, today.  Touch me with the right words to say.  Help me to be alert to recognize that person when he or she comes.