“will not have this man to reign over them.”  Against this combination it is the appointed business,—­the life of the two witnesses, to prophesy for a definite period of 42 months, 1260 days, time, times and a half; all indicating the same duration, 1260 natural years.  All this time the witnesses are alive and active, but in an obscure and depressed condition, wearing sackcloth in the wilderness, “not reckoned, (not reckoning themselves,) among the nations.” (Num. xxiii. 9; Dan. vii. 22, 27; Rev. xx. 4.) Such is the condition of the saints, and such the powerful combination against them, as symbolically represented in the 11th, 12th and 13th chapters of the Apocalypse.  And in this prolonged and eventful conflict we may with Moses, “turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.” (Exod. iii. 3.) The Lord was in the bush, and “greater is he that is in them than he that is in the world.” (1 John iv. 4.) This will appear in the following chapter.

CHAPTER XIV.

As the 13th chapter contains the most full and graphic description of the great apostacy, so in this chapter we have the other party described which protested against that apostacy.  It is a concise history of the two witnesses in holy and happy fellowship with Christ, when he had rejected the heathenized church, because of her unholy league with the beast of the bottomless pit, (ch. xi. 2, 7.) The contrast between the “sealed” ones here, and those who bore the “mark of the beast,” is very noticeable.  This fact suggests that the parties are cotemporary.  Besides, it is evident that this company of 144,000 are the legitimate successors of those sealed in ch. vii. 4-8; or rather, from the perpetual identity of the covenant society as a moral person, we may view this company as the same with the sealed ones of the seventh chapter, the two witnesses of the eleventh chapter, and as in the wilderness in the 12th chapter.  Political bias caused a learned expositor to interpret the third angel of this chapter as a symbol of the prelatic church of England! and a similar bias, or modern charity, induced another to distinguish between the “two witnesses” and the 144,000.  To the unbiased and enlightened mind it is obvious that instead of the 144,000 symbolizing the “pious people,—­in the different branches of the Christian church”—­all true Christians; they are in fact distinguished from true Christians, as 144,000 from “a great multitude ... who had washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” (ch. vii. 9, 14.)

As the Antichrist, after his first development in the world, appeared in diverse forms of organization, thereby more effectually to deceive them that dwell on the earth, yet still preserved his moral identity, so the faithful servants of Christ are presented in corresponding attitudes and aspects, to oppose and counteract his diabolical policy and tyranny; yet always preserving their proper identity during the whole period of 1260 years.