In fact, in the passage John denies it twice, "Are you Elias? No. Are you that prophet? No."

On the other hand, Jesus said he was.

Matt. 17: 11 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things.
12 But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.
13 Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.

Taking that passage in isolation I can see why you believe what you do. But, accepting John as Elijah allows for too many problems.

1. Was John literally Elijah? Does it imply some kind of re-incarnation or of the spirit of Elijah indwelling a different body. If John was Elijah, then why do we see Elijah and not John at the Mount of Transfiguration?

2. Was John or Jesus mistaken? Did Jesus think John was Elijah, or did John not realise he was Elijah?

3. If John was Elijah why did Christ make the fulfillment of that conditional upon the acceptance of Israel of Christ?

I believe that Malachi could speak of both John and Elijah (Malachi 3:1 for the former Malachi 4:5 for the latter).

Basically, I believe John came in the Spirit and power of Elijah but was not Elijah. John came in the spirit and power of Elijah for the first appearance of Christ and Elijah himself will come as a witness before the Second Coming.

As a premillennialist the understanding that Elijah's ministry comes before the "great and dreadful day of the LORD:" fits perfectly with the rest of Scripture.

This is the is the only way to reconcile the various Scriptures we see.

My question is this, if John was Elijah, why did he say he wasn't? Twice?

Jesus said he was, twice.

Mt 11:14 And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.

A Jewish believer said that if the Jews would receive it, John was Elias, but as they didn't receive it, he wasn't.

If John was is in the spirit and power of Elijah, then I believe that he fulfilled the prophecy.

Followers of Hendricksen believe that the 2 witnesses are the church through the ages. Historicists believe that they are the church under the Roman Catholic persecutions, the death of the witnesses was the dearth of true witness just before the reformation when the church to all appearences was dead. The resurrection of the witnesses was the reformation. This I believe is the true interpretation.

Davo, this interpretation is an allegorical interpretation. What factors in scripture do you take into consideration when determining what is literal, and what is allegorical? An interpretation of the two witnesses, abomination of desolation, destruction of the temple, etc. being anything other than what they are contextually, is an allegorical view, and in that case allows for Jesus himself to be viewed as an allegory and not a true person.

I know that sounds harsh, but we cannot pick and choose what parts of scripture are, or are not, literal. Context and surrounding scripture always enlightens itself.

I suggest a book to you, it is called "Prophecy in Context" by Dr. Bob Shelton. It does an excellent job of refuting the historicist/preterist and amillennial viewpoint of eschatology according to Matt. 24&25. You can get it here:

http://www.bjupress.com/product/256842

Love in Christ,

Jim

This post was last modified: Wed Nov 19, 2008 06:38 PM by Jim.

You are using a text in isolation. Why did John deny being Elijah if he was not. Did he not know he was Elijah?

Massive amounts of Scripture must be ignored, completely and 100% ignored to make the church the two witnesses.

1. The church never died, it has ebbed and grown through the centuries.
2. The reformation was not a resurrection, it may have been the beginning of a great time of growth, but it was not a resurrection.

From the text in Revelation 11 how does the church fit the description of the two witnesses?

11:5 & 6 - When has the church consumed it's enemies with fire and withheld the rain? When has the church changed the water to blood and called down plagues?

11:7 - They finished their testimony before death. They run the race, they complete their course. It does not indicate a failure, but a perfect completion! For you who is the identity of the beast?

11:8 - Did the church end in Jerusalem?

11:9 - Did the world rejoice before the reformation or did a largely apostate church and ignorant population not even realise its failue?

11:10 - What gifts where sent and by whom?

11:12 - The witnesses departed immediately after their resurrection, or will do, but if it refers to the church why are we here?

11:13 - What was the great earthquake?

11:14 - What is the next woe?

Forgive me for asking a multitude of questions, but I just wanted to show that the church can in no imaginable way be these two witnesses without, in my opinion, doing a great injustice to Scripture.

Jim, the book of Revelation is told by symbols, or signs, it says so in Verse 1 chapter 1. You make nonsense of it if you ignore that,

11 ....and great fear fell upon them which saw them. Not the pope, or the Lateran Council which had by then disbanded, but those who where on the ground and observed the beginning of the reformation, Tetzel, Cardinal Caietan, Eck, Millitz, those that beheld them.

You and I must read it differently then. Please show me where you see anywhere at all an allegorical sense of John's Revelation on the Isle of Patmos, nowhere does it even hint to "signs" or "symbols" (maybe you meant another verse?):

It is quite clear that what John saw was "things which must shortly come to pass". What other way can this be understood other than he literally saw what was going to happen?

Again, I reiterate, it is not good to allegorize God's Word, period. THAT is where nonsense is made.

Problems do not occur when someone takes something literally in God's Word. It is when people start making something of it more than what it is, when they begin.

Love in Christ,

Jim

This post was last modified: Thu Nov 20, 2008 11:14 PM by Jim.

Davo, you said, "Just before the reformation the church was to all intents and purposes, dead." That does not cut it.

Do we bury people when they are "for all intents and purposes, dead"? Dead is dead is dead. There are not varying degrees of dead. Christ promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the church, and yet for the two witnesses to be the church Hell does prevail but then God has to bring it back to life?

The pride of some in the reformers camp is hard for me to accept. All through the past 2000 years there have been small, independent groups faithfully following the Word of God. As much as I appreciate the reformers many of the institutions that followed them (C of E, Presbyterian, Luthern etc) become persecutors of those small groups that existed before them. To say that the church was dead and the reformers were used to bring it back to life is completely against history and Scripture.

You did not answer the question about verses 5 & 6.

Sorry, but your explanation of verse 8 is impossible. Maybe Roman hands hammered the nails, but Jewish politicans and religious leaders led the allegations against Christ. Jew and Gentile alike were responsible for the physical death of Christ.

And just because the Roman church claims something does not make it true.

How do we decide that heaven in Revelation refers to political power? So the two witnesses, the church, have been called up to political power? What political power does the church have today? Apart from Rome and largely apostate state churches of course.

11:14 - What is the next woe?

The allegorising of the two witnesses, I maintain, does great injustice to Scripture.

Rev 1:1 ¶ The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John:

Signified means to tell by signs or symbols. It is not allegorizing, it it signifying, or symbolizing.

This post was last modified: Fri Nov 21, 2008 07:56 PM by Davo.

There are certainly signs in Revelation, but they are almost always interpreted within the book itself. To make the whole thing symbolical is not a mandate given by Scripture and there is no consistent way to make the whole book symbolical. Even you would have to pick and choose which things are symbols and which are not.

Plus, the word signified does not mean signs as simple as that, it implies signs but can also mean to indicate, to make known.

There are interpretations in the Revelation as well as in other books such as Daniel.

And always mandated by surrounding context. The two witnesses is not one of those interpretations.

Well here it is.

Chapter 10 of the book of Revelation is a wonderful picture of the reformation. Chapter 11 is retrospective look at the church before the reformation. The reformers wondered what had happened before their time and chapter 11 is a look back at that time.

Martin Luther, at the Diet of Worms, was accused of being a Hussite, which he denied. However as he realized that he did not know what a Hussite was he went inso the University Library and looked it up. The next day he admitted that he was a Hussite.

The Pope said after the reformation had started, that the heretics had come alive in Luther.

Looking back at the original posting and the poll.

Why would John the Baptist not be one of your witnesses as he was the greatest prophet?

This post was last modified: Sun Aug 16, 2009 08:09 PM by Davo.