When the 144000 are sealed out of all the twelve tribes of Israel, and the rest receive the mark of the Beast, and thereby the first temple is destroyed; John is bidden to measure the temple and altar, that is, their courts, and them that worship therein, that is, the 144000 standing on mount Sion and on the sea of glass: but the court that is without the temple, that is, the peoples’ court, to leave out and measure it not, because it is given to the Gentiles, those who receive the mark of the Beast; and the holy city they shall tread under foot forty and two months, that is, all the time that the Beast acts under the woman Babylon: and the two witnesses prophesy 1260 days, that is, all the same time, clothed in sackcloth. These have power, like Elijah, to shut heaven that it rain not, at the sounding of the first trumpet; and, like Moses, to turn the waters into blood at the sounding of the second; and to smite the earth with all plagues, those of the trumpets, as often as they will. These prophesy at the building of the second temple, like Haggai and Zechary. These are the two Olive-trees, or Churches, which supplied the lamps with oil, Zechariah 4:These are the two candlesticks, or Churches, standing before the God of the earth. Five of the seven Churches of Asia, those in prosperity, are found fault with, and exhorted to repent, and threatened to be removed out of their places, or spewed out of Christ’s mouth, or punished with the sword of Christ’s mouth, except they repent: the other two, the Churches of Smyrna and Philadelphia, which were under persecution, remain in a state of persecution, to illuminate the second temple. When the primitive Church catholic, represented by the woman in heaven, apostatized, and became divided into two corrupt Churches, represented by the whore of Babylon and the two-horned Beast, the 144000 who were sealed out of all the twelve tribes, became the two Witnesses, in opposition to those two false Churches: and the name of two Witnesses once imposed, remains to the true Church of God in all times and places to the end of the Prophecy.
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