And I will cause my two witnesses to prophesy a thousand two hundred and sixty days dressed in sackcloth.’”​—Revelation 11:1-4.

22. (a) What kind of witnesses were those “two witnesses”? (b) Upon what was John relying now for relationship with Jehovah?

²² In this case these symbolic “two witnesses” of the God of the temple would be Christian witnesses of the Most High God, for the apostle John was being shown things that were yet to come to pass, not things of past Jewish history. (Revelation 1:1-6)

24. So, who were those symbolic “two witnesses,” when were they trampled upon by the nations, and how did they prophesy in sackcloth?

²⁴ So, in the Revelation to John, those who are spoken of by God as “my two witnesses” are spiritual Israelites, dedicated, baptized followers of the Messiah whom John followed, namely, Jesus Christ. As worshipers of Jehovah of armies, as it were, in the courtyard of his spiritual temple, they were trampled underfoot by the Gentile nations “for forty-two months.” This was during World War I of the years 1914-1918. During that time these symbolic “two witnesses” prophesied in sackcloth, in the sense that the message they publicly proclaimed was a mournful one. It foretold the coming destruction, the violent death, of all the Gentile nations now that the “times of the Gentiles” had ended in early fall of the year 1914. (Luke 21:24) Like gloomy-looking prophets, dressed in the mournful garb of sackcloth, they prophesied for one thousand two hundred and sixty days during the first world war. (Revelation 11:1-3) What happened to them then, as foreseen by the apostle John?

25. According to John’s vision, what happened to them after they had finished their testifying?

²⁵ “And when they have finished their witnessing, the wild beast that ascends out of the abyss will make war with them and conquer them and kill them. And their corpses will be on the broad way of the great city which is in a spiritual sense called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was also impaled.”​—Revelation 11:7, 8.

26. How was that prophetic picture fulfilled during World War I?

²⁶ That wild beast out of the abyss is later shown to symbolize the world organization of politics now millenniums old. In the spring of the year 1918, before World War I was over, this beastly political organization took advantage of war conditions to ban literature on the Bible as used by the “two witnesses” class and imprisoned dedicated Christians who were foremost in publishing it. Thus the free public work of the symbolic “two witnesses” was killed; and as far as public witnessing for Jehovah’s theocratic government is concerned, they were like dead bodies lying in the streets of Christendom, exposed to shame and religious persecution.

27. At that time they were like the Israelites in what condition, but why did this not last long for these “witnesses”?

²⁷ At that time those dedicated, baptized Christian worshipers at the spiritual temple of Jehovah of armies were like those natural Israelites exiled in Babylon from 607 to 537 B.C.E. But the prophetic vision in Revelation forevisioned that that condition would not last long with these symbolic “two witnesses”​—as it were, only “for three and a half days.” What then? Were their corpses buried? No! They were revived. “And after the three and a half days spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet, and great fear fell upon those beholding them.” (Revelation 11:9-11) So, too, these persecuted Christian “prophets” concerning God’s newborn Messianic kingdom were not buried forever in Christendom nor in all the rest of Babylon the Great, the world empire of false religion. In the spring of the year 1919 “spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet,” making a reappearance publicly as the commissioned witnesses for God’s kingdom of His Messiah. Like the Israelite remnant of Haggai’s day, who were brought back from Babylon to Jerusalem and Judah, they reoccupied their right spiritual estate.