The Eleventh Chapter: The Extent of the Killing of the Witnesses

It is a question how far the generality or universality of this slaughter may reach; and, First, Whether to all sorts of professors of religion, or only to eminent persons in the church? as witnesses, probably the most excellent saints will be singled out to a duel, or single combat as it were. The Gentiles before this had the outward court of carnal professors more easily yielded; but among these truly godly ones, they find serious and stiff opposers that will never be brought to yield to them: and the Popish party themselves see and find, that the godly of the Protestants are their only real enemies, who put the great bars and impeachments to their plots, and are the great stakes in the hedge of the church, standing in the gap against their irruptions: and these alone tormenting the ungodly by their lives and profession, (v. 14,) are triumphed over by the beast: This therefore may not be a massacre of all sorts of professors at large, like that in Paris, A.D. 1572, but a set battle against sincere witnesses alone, whom their enemies have been taught to know and distinguish from others by the fire they have shot into their consciences, (v. 5:) so Antiochus’ three and half years’ persecution fell especially on the teachers and instructors, Dan. xi. 35. But these witnesses being “the golden candlesticks,” (v. 4,) a scattering of the purer churches will be joined with this killing: and if their olive-trees be felled and removed, if their prophets and rulers be scattered, “the sheep will be scattered, the shepherd being smitten;” which

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Matt. xxvi. 31, is here alluded to. Secondly, Whether this killing of the witnesses shall be over all the Reformed churches, and of all Protestant states and kingdoms? 1st, Graserus, a judicious Lutheran divine, thinks it will be universal, and that the angel’s scope is thus to difference this last from all former partial eclipses of true churches; that whereas persecutions have never ceased in one place or other, at one time or other, now they will prevail at the same time in all places; and such universality the treading down of the outward court, and the great and general sins of all churches, do at least threaten; and thus “the dead bodies seen in the street, (or jurisdiction,) of the great city” might import, that wherever witnesses are to be found, they shall be killed, and so exposed to view. This I deny not, but think it may be the event more or less; yet I believe that some one kingdom or state, will more eminently be made the seat of this war, the field of this battle, the shambles of this slaughter; for where the witnesses rise from their dead conditions, there an earthquake shakes the tenth part of the city, or one of those ten European states that have given up their kingdoms to the beast, but shall now in this slaughter begin to fall from, and cease to be a part of the city, no longer belonging to the jurisdiction of Rome, under which it had again been for the space of three years and a half; and there this earthquake is for the special help and furtherance of the witnesses’ rising in this kingdom, and ascending into heaven, whose slaughter it will avenge by killing seven thousand names of men, their enemies, v. 13. Now if this resurrection and ascension be in some one part of the ten kingdoms made more eminently glorious, as the special privilege of the witnesses therein, the death also therein should also be more conspicuous; for the glory to follow is in proportion to our suffering here with Christ: and though the main shock of the storm may fall there, yet the whole heavens may be covered with black, and all churches feel some drops and sprinklings of it. 2dly, The witnesses lie dead in the street, not in all the streets or states of Rome’s jurisdiction; the Protestant party (the peoples, and kindreds, &cj in the other streets (or nations) noticing the slaughter, as by-standcrs aloof, will perhaps prohibit them a sanctuary, or grave to hide their heads in, when they flee thither for help. 3dly, If in this last combat the witnesses be singled out as the one party, and if by witnesses be meant only such faithful Christians and professors as hold forth an emiment testimony, (not men of learning, but of holiness and zeal, being the real tormentors of these their enemies;) surely where such witnesses are chiefly found following the steps of their fore fathers slain before them for the same cause, there especially will be the seat of this war. Now, 4thly, In all the Reformed churches how few such witnesses are there! the fire and heat of the first Reformers, (which scorched the Popish Gentiles,) have

662 EXTENT OF THE WITNESSES’ KILLING. [REV. XI. 7 — 10.

left only a light remaining, and so faint and cold and dull a testimony as the enemy despises: only in the witnesses of great Britain, both the light and heat of religion have been in times past preserved and increased; and more true witnesses will probably be found in it, in the last day, (wherein this slaughter is to fall out,) than in all other of the Reformed churches; and that according to the testimony of those who, in times past of begun scattering, have come hither. Sthly, The place of killing the witnesses will surely be where most witnesses are, in which kingdom also are more eminently found those last sort of champions for the beast, who receive only the number of his name, and yet shall be chief executioners of this last slaughter, and are to be overcome last of all the beast’s company before the fifth vial o.i his seat, as in c. xv. Add we hereto, 6thly, This conjecture upon Dan. xi. 44, 45, (which chapter, from v. 36, hath Graserus excellently, [and Mr. Mede on 1 Tim. iv. 1, 2,] applied to the Pope, that wilful king typified by Antiochus:) where the angel’s scope is, to shew the issue of the beast’s last expedition against the Reformed churches before his end, in the last war of Antichrist’s “accomplishing to scatter the power of the holy people;” where in “going forth in such fury utterly to destroy, he shall plant the tabernacle of his palace between the seas, in the glorious holy mountain: yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help him.” Now this Holy Mount is the Zion of Christendom, where stands the temple of the true church, which is “the mountain of the Lord’s house,” (Isa. ii. 2,) erected in Europe by the northern Reformation, against which the beast shall prevail so as to tread it down, and place again the tents of his throne upon it, or at least some part of it, as Alstedius and others confirm, and as accords with the delivering up of the outward court: and this Zion being situated among the seas, designates its distinction from every other church. Luther makes it point to Rome, the seat of the beast, between the Adriatic and Tuscan seas: but how could the beast “go forth to plant” if some new-gained settlement were not meant, or if the ordinary place of his residence was meant? Graserus hints at Germany, between the Baltic and German oceans; but even so, it could only be its northern parts. I fear for our own isles, our British Zion, which God hath made pre-eminently the seat of the church in these latter-days, and which so stand between the seas as to be wholly among seas, (” Penitus Toto Divisos Orbe Britannos”) and which “God hath loved above all the habitations of Jacob,” Ps. lxxxvii. 2. And as the angel also calls this mountain by this high and transcendent phrase, “the mountain of delights of holiness” or as Junius turns it, “of holy comeliness;” it seems to note out some “place of uprightness,” where God’s majesty and glory should shine, so as to render it his delight, and comely in his eyes, though, for the trial of the witnesses therein, to be again ceded

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to Antichrist, “to plant there the tabernacle of his palaces,” or throne, (or clergy, as Graserus reads it;) even as Nebuchadnezzar planted his throne at Tahapanes, as a sign of his conquest of Egypt: So that he shall be so rooted in his pristine sovereignty, that in hope of recovering all, the whore of Babylon shall sing just before her fall, “No widow 7.” But this sudden victory is only a pitching tent in a field; and not being a tabernacle of God’s planting, it will come to nothing; for” Every plant which the Father plants not, shall be rooted up,” Matt. xv. 13: there fore “He shall come to his end, and none shall help him”