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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
REVELATION CHAPTER 11
Rev_11:1,2 John is commanded to measure the temple, all but the
outer court.
Rev_11:3,4 The two witnesses that shall prophesy,
Rev_11:5,6 their power,
Rev_11:7 the beast shall fight against them, and kill them,
Rev_11:8-10 they shall lie unburied three days and a half,
Rev_11:11,12 and then rise again, and ascend into heaven.
Rev_11:13 A great earthquake.
Rev_11:14 The second woe past.
Rev_11:15-19 The seventh trumpet sounded: the heavenly choir
celebrate the glories of God’s kingdom.
And there was given me a reed like a rod; the next words tell us the use of this reed. It was a measuring reed, such a one as Ezekiel in his vision {Eze_40:3} saw in the man’s hand. There, the measuring was in order to a rebuilding; here, in order to preserving.
And the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God: we cannot well understand what followeth, without understanding the structure of the temple. The Jews, for the place of their worship, had first a tabernacle, then a temple. The tabernacle was a movable house, which they took down and carried about with them in their journeyings, and pitched down when in any place they pitched their tents. We read of it, Exo_40:1-38. We read but of one court in that, into which only the priests and Levites entered; the people were without it, pitching their tents round about it. It had in it an altar of gold for incense, Exo_40:5, which stood before the ark, Exo_40:26,27; and an altar for burnt-offering, which stood by the door of the tabernacle, Exo_40:29. The temple was built by Solomon, 1Ki_6:1-38, and afterwards rebuilt by Zerubbabel, upon their return out of captivity. That was built with two courts; an inner court, 1Ki_6:36, in which was the altar; and an outward court, which is called the great court, 2Ch_4:9, and in Ezekiel, many times, the outward court. This is called the house, in 1Ki_6:17. It was in length forty cubits; the oracle was within it, 1Ki_6:19, where stood the ark covered with the cherubims. Into the inward court the priests and Levites only came; into the outward court came any of the Israelites. Herod, upon the additional building to the temple, added another large court, called the court of the Gentiles; but that not being of God’s direction, nor in Solomon’s temple, or Zerubbabel’s, is not here mentioned. This temple was a type of the church under the New Testament, 1Co_3:17 2Co_6:16, and is so to be interpreted generally in this book: for the material temple at Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans more than twenty years before this prophecy, never to be built more; not one stone was left upon another; so that John here was bid to measure the church.
And the altar, and them that worship therein; yet not the whole church, but that part of it which the inner court typified; the altar, and those that worshipped within that space where that was, which of old were only the priests and Levites; and under the New Testament signified those who were to be a holy priesthood, a spiritual house, those that should offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ, 1Pe_2:5, who could endure a measuring by God’s reed, the word of God.