Revelation 11:4

_ _ standing before the God of the earth — A, B, C, Vulgate, Syriac, Coptic, and Andreas read “Lord” for “God”: so Zechariah 4:14. Ministering to (Luke 1:19), and as in the sight of Him, who, though now so widely disowned on “earth,” is its rightful King, and shall at last be openly recognized as such (Revelation 11:15). The phrase alludes to Zechariah 4:10, Zechariah 4:14, “the two anointed ones that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.” The article “the” marks this allusion. They are “the two candlesticks,” not that they are the Church, the one candlestick, but as its representative light-bearers (Greek, “phosteres,” Philippians 2:15), and ministering for its encouragement in a time of apostasy. Wordsworth’s view is worth consideration, whether it may not constitute a secondary sense: the two witnesses, the olive trees, are THE TWO TESTAMENTS ministering their testimony to the Church of the old dispensation, as well as to that of the new, which explains the two witnesses being called also the two candlesticks (the Old and New Testament churches; the candlestick in Zechariah 4:2 is but one as there was then but one Testament, and one Church, the Jewish). The Church in both dispensations has no light in herself, but derives it from the Spirit through the witness of the twofold word, the two olive trees: compare Note, see on Revelation 11:1, which is connected with this, the reed, the Scripture canon, being the measure of the Church: so Primasius [X, p. 314]: the two witnesses preach in sackcloth, marking the ignominious treatment which the word, like Christ Himself, receives from the world. So the twenty-four elders represent the ministers of the two dispensations by the double twelve. But Revelation 11:7 proves that primarily the two Testaments cannot be meant; for these shall never be “killed,” and never “shall have finished their testimony” till the world is finished.