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-

But what was this “great city”?

22. (a) What is the great city? (b) How did the public press join in with the clergy in rejoicing over the silencing of the two witnesses? (See box.)

²² John gives us some clues. He says that Jesus was impaled there. So we immediately think of Jerusalem. But he also says that the great city is called Sodom and Egypt. Well, literal Jerusalem was once called Sodom because of her unclean practices. (Isaiah 1:8-10; compare Ezekiel 16:49, 53-58.) And Egypt, the first world power, sometimes appears as a picture of this world system of things. (Isaiah 19:1, 19; Joel 3:19) Hence, this great city pictures a defiled “Jerusalem” that claims to worship God but that has become unclean and sinful, like Sodom, and a part of this satanic world system of things, like Egypt. It pictures Christendom, the modern equivalent of unfaithful Jerusalem, the organization whose members had so much reason to rejoice when they silenced the disturbing preaching of the two witnesses.

“And in that hour a great earthquake occurred, and a tenth of the city fell; and seven thousand persons were killed by the earthquake, and the rest became frightened and gave glory to the God of heaven.” (Revelation 11:13) There were truly great convulsions in the realm of religion. The ground seemed to move under the leaders of the established churches as this body of revivified Christians got to work. One tenth of their city, figuratively 7,000 persons, were so profoundly affected that they are spoken of as being killed.

26. Who are represented by the “tenth of the city” and the “seven thousand” of Revelation 11:13? Explain.

²⁶ The expression “a tenth of the city” reminds us that Isaiah prophesied regarding ancient Jerusalem that a tenth would survive the destruction of the city as a holy seed. (Isaiah 6:13) Similarly, the number 7,000 reminds us that when Elijah felt that he alone remained faithful in Israel, Jehovah told him that there were, in fact, still 7,000 who had not bent down to Baal. (1 Kings 19:14, 18) In the first century, the apostle Paul said that these 7,000 pictured the remnant of the Jews who had responded to the good news about the Christ. (Romans 11:1-5) These scriptures help us to understand that the “seven thousand” and the “tenth of the city” in Revelation 11:13 are those who respond to the restored two witnesses and abandon the sinful great city. They die, as it were, to Christendom. Their names are taken off her membership rolls. They no longer exist as far as she is concerned.d