Memory Text: “Their bodies will lie in the public square of the great city—which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt—where also their Lord was crucified.” Rev. 11:8 NIV
In part one of this series we noted that the investigative judgment in heaven is prophetically pointed out, both at the beginning and end of Revelation Chapter 11, so we can assume that the events discussed in the middle of the chapter are taking place at the same time as the investigative judgement in the heavenly sanctuary, which began in 1844 and will continue until the close of probation, shortly before the Second Coming of Christ.
In part two, we identified the two witnesses as the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, which testified “clothed in sackcloth” for the 1260-year period between 538 AD and 1798, but are attacked and killed by the “beast from the Abyss,” which we identified in part three as being Satan working through “a new manifestation of satanic power,” (GC 298) not the Papacy or the Roman Catholic Church.
Rev. 11:8 states that the dead bodies of the two witnesses “lie dead in the public square of a great city.” This is spiritual language, of course, not necessarily meaning a literal public square or a literal city; it means that the attack on the Scriptures is not something “done in a corner,” but rather a very public thing taking place in a very prominent location for all the world to see. The events foretold are not hidden or happening in private.
A. Spiritually Egypt
The “great city” is figuratively or spiritually Egypt. Which does not mean that “the city” is located physically in Egypt; rather, it means that “the great city” shares a spiritual characteristic with Egypt, as Egypt is described in Scripture. This characteristic is atheism. When Moses asked the Pharaoh to let Israel Go, Pharaoh proudly responded, “Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken unto His voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, and moreover I will not let Israel go.” Exodus 5:2. In other words, “I don’t recognize the existence of your god, and even if your god exists, I’m not taking orders from him.”
Here is Ellen White’s commentary:
“The great city” in whose streets the witnesses are slain, and where their dead bodies lie, is “spiritually” Egypt. Of all nations presented in Bible history, Egypt most boldly denied the existence of the living God and resisted His commands. No monarch ever ventured upon more open and highhanded rebellion against the authority of Heaven than did the king of Egypt. When the message was brought him by Moses, in the name of the Lord, Pharaoh proudly answered: “Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken unto His voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, and moreover I will not let Israel go.” Exodus 5:2, A.R.V. This is atheism, and the nation represented by Egypt would give voice to a similar denial of the claims of the living God and would manifest a like spirit of unbelief and defiance.” Great Controversy, p. 269 (emphasis added)
The Pharaonic system of government is an absolute autocracy: one man rules the entire nation and has absolute, un-checked power and authority. L'État, c'est moi (“the state, it is me,” or more loosely, “I am the state”) is one of those “he probably never actually said it” quotes, this one attributed to France’s Louis the XIV, the builder of Versailles. The Sun King’s proud boast was not actually true of the Bourbons (as we shall see), but it was true of the Pharaohs; their word was law. So when Pharaoh said “I don’t know or recognize any Jehovah,” that was the law of the land. That meant that atheism was the official philosophy of the land. And that’s what we are concerned with here; “spiritual Egypt” does not denote a nation with a lot of atheists, it means an officially atheistic nation.
B. Must the United States Be Officially Atheistic?
Before we forge ahead into the atheism of Revolutionary France, and discuss how it fits this apocalyptic prophecy, we should take a moment to unpack the implications of the above paragraph in Great Controversy for our philosophy of religious liberty. Does Ellen White require that the United States be officially atheistic? Quite to the contrary, judging from this paragraph of Great Controversy, she is scandalized, if not horrified, by official atheism. She obviously believes it a very bad thing for the government to deny God and rebel against God’s clear commands and precepts.
Why, then, do so many Adventists believe the United State government should be officially atheistic? There is a strong strand of Adventist church-state philosophy that holds that the U.S. should not have things like chaplains for the House and Senate and the military, prayer to open sessions of the House and the Senate, an official motto that says, “in God we trust,” prayer breakfasts, a national day of prayer, a national holiday for Thanksgiving, etc.
But a totally atheistic government is not in keeping with our national character. There is no constitutional problem with official recognition of God and the religious character of the American people. The entire calendar is organized around a weekly cycle in which most people take Sabbath and Sunday off from work for reasons purely religious in origin. To the extent that our religious liberty establishment wants to cavil at official recognition of the existence of God, or of the fact that Americans are a religious people, it is simply wrong. We should never, as a denomination, be pushing for such a warped concept of church-state separation as to try to extirpate all official references to God and religion.
To be clear, the constitution does prohibit the government from “establishing” a religion. To establish a religion means to support one sect over all the others by paying for its churches and its clergy with tax dollars. This is what the founders forbade in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
It is mostly due to Christian influence, particularly the influence of the radical Reformation, that we think an established religion is a bad thing—the Papacy never had a problem with an established religion, obviously, and the first phases of the Reformation merely established the Calvinists, Lutherans, and Anglicans in the territory they controlled. It was not until the later Reformation, the radical Reformation—the Anabaptists, Methodists, and Baptists—that opinion in Protestant America turned against established religion.
Why? Because later reformers recognized that establishment corrupted the church! When the clergy can rely on compulsory payments, “tithe” that the state forcibly collects, to fund their offices, they become unresponsive to their parishioners. For the good of the church, clergy must be forced to rely on voluntary giving, so that they remain responsive to the spiritual needs of their flocks. If you want a clear picture of the dysfunction caused by religious establishment, look at the disaster of the Church of England, in which only 10% attend church on a Sunday morning, or the established Lutheran churches in northern Europe and Scandinavia, or the Orthodox churches in Eastern Europe, or the Roman Catholic Church in Spain and Italy. Almost every American denomination is doing better in terms of growth, member retention, weekly attendance, and every other metric than these established churches. Establishment ruins the church.
But it is not necessary for the state to pretend there is no God merely to avoid establishing a denomination. Must every public school in America to teach Darwinism as the truth of man’s origins to avoid establishing a particular sect? Of course not! No one ever thought that until the 1960s. Did anyone think it was necessary to outlaw prayer in the public schools to avoid establishing a particular sect? No, again, not until the 1960s.
By the way, why did the Catholics establish the largest private school system in the United States? Because the public schools of Protestant America were effectively Protestant schools, where, in many areas, prayer was prayed, the Bible read, and Protestant values inculcated. Did anyone think this violated the constitution’s establishment clause? No, because schooling had always been a local function, not a concern of the federal government. It was expected that local public schools would reflect local values, which in most cases were Protestant, so no one thought public schools that reflected a general Protestant ethos were an unlawful establishment of a particular sect.
Here is a key point: The founders understood not that religion was evil and needed to be driven out of public life, but rather that you could not have a single sect established by the federal government, when you had radical Protestants in New England, Presbyterians in the mid-Atlantic states, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Catholics in Maryland and Delaware, Anglicans in Virginia and the South, and Baptists and Methodists spread throughout. It was clear to the founders that any federally established religion would unavoidably be resented in much of the country, and would bring both the government and the established denomination into disrepute. It was much better, even from a practical standpoint, to dispense altogether with tax-supported religion. So that is what they did, and it has been a great blessing to both church and state.
But because of wrong ideas about what constitutes establishment of religion, we have ended up with exactly what the founders wished to avoid: a one-size-fits-all system dictated from the national capital by a branch of the federal government—the judiciary, headed up by the Supreme Court—that outlaws prayer and enforces the inculcation of the atheistic origins myth in our public schools. Under the pretext of non-establishment, we have effectively established spiritual Egypt—atheism—right here in the educational system of the United States of America. And we can tell from just one paragraph of Great Controversy that Ellen White would never have understood nor approved of this.
(And this is the educational regime that prevailed from the 1960s to the 2010s; American education for the past 10 to 15 years is far worse: hardcore Marxism with its attendant gender rebellion, perversion, extreme environmentalism, etc. But that’s a story for a later installment.)
C. French Revolution the First Manifestation of the Rev. 11 Phenomenon
We can hardly justify a drumroll for the big reveal. Most of you have read Chapter 15 of Great Controversy and have long understood that Seventh-day Adventists believe that Revelation 11:7-12 has found a fulfillment—“a most exact and striking fulfillment”—in the history of the French Revolution:
“This prophecy has received a most exact and striking fulfillment in the history of France. During the Revolution, in 1793, “the world for the first time heard an assembly of men, born and educated in civilization, and assuming the right to govern one of the finest of the European nations, uplift their united voice to deny the most solemn truth which man's soul receives, and renounce unanimously the belief and worship of a Deity.”—Sir Walter Scott, Life of Napoleon, vol. 1, ch. 17. Great Controversy, p. 269, par. 4.
“The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.” The atheistical power that ruled in France during the Revolution and the Reign of Terror, did wage such a war against God and His holy word as the world had never witnessed. The worship of the Deity was abolished by the National Assembly. Bibles were collected and publicly burned with every possible manifestation of scorn. The law of God was trampled underfoot. The institutions of the Bible were abolished.” Great Controversy, p. 273, par. 2.
Please note that Ellen White said, “A . . . fulfillment,” not “the fulfillment,” as in, the only fulfillment. I do not believe in verbal inspiration; it is the writers of Scripture who are inspired, “carried along by the Holy Spirit,” not the words themselves, which are human words. But I believe Ellen White was inspired to use the indefinite article “a,” which allows for multiple fulfillment, rather than the definite article, “the,” which would point to a single fulfillment.
I believe the French Revolution was merely the prototype for all subsequent Leftist revolutions, including the 1870 Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, all the communist revolutions of the 20th Century, and the Leftist Revolution currently sweeping over the United States.
There is no question that the French Revolution was the original, the prototype, and had Jesus returned when 19th Century Adventists, including Ellen White, expected him to return—before 1900—it would have been the only fulfillment of Rev. 11:7-12. Ellen White was shown that there are no prophetic time periods that extend beyond 1844, and she also wrote these statements:
"Had Adventists, after the great disappointment in 1844, held fast their faith, and followed on unitedly in the opening providence of God, receiving the message of the third angel and in the power of the Holy Spirit proclaiming it to the world, they would have seen the salvation of God, the Lord would have wrought mightily with their efforts, the work would have been completed, and Christ would have come ere this to receive His people to their reward.” (1883) 1 SM 68
"Had the purpose of God been carried out by His people in giving to the world the message of mercy, Christ would, ere this, have come to the earth, and the saints would have received their welcome into the city of God."—Testimonies, vol. 6, p. 450 (1900). Evangelism, p. 694.3
"I know that if the people of God had preserved a living connection with Him, if they had obeyed His Word, they would today be in the heavenly Canaan."—The General Conference Bulletin, March 30, 1903. Evangelism, p. 694
On the other hand, as we discussed in part 1, Revelation 11 is bookended by references to the investigative judgment in heaven, which did not even begin until 1844. Does this mean that some later revolutionary movement, such as the Russian Revolution (which was far more effective for far longer at suppressing the Scriptures—killing the two witnesses, and leaving them dead in the street) was the fulfilment of Revelation 11?
No, because the Scriptures indicate that this happens immediately upon the two witnesses completing their testimony clothed in sackcloth: “Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them.” We are confident that the 1260-year period—which is also the 42 months and the “time, times and half a time”—ended in 1798. So we should be looking for something around that time, and the connections we find between France and Egypt that began in the very year of 1798 are startling.
D. The Connections Between France and Egypt
First, there was Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt. He left for Egypt in late spring of 1798, taking with him 50,000 soldiers and 160 scientists, engineers, and artists whose task it was to discover and study everything that could be learned about Egypt. The most fruitful discovery turned out to be the Rosetta Stone, found in Rosetta, Egypt; the stone had a royal decree written in three scripts: hieroglyphic, Demotic (a kind of shorthand form of hieroglyphic) and ancient Greek. The Rosetta Stone was the key that allowed Jean-François Champollion, in 1821, to unlock the hieroglyphs, and thereby to open wide the study of ancient Egypt.
Napoleon was so impressed by the fighting élan of the Egyptian Mamelukes that he incorporated Mameluke cavalry into the Imperial Guard, the most prestigious unit in the French army. He also had several fierce Mamelukes to serve in his personal bodyguard.
The connection between France and Egypt continued when a French diplomat, Ferdinand de Lesseps, developed the Suez Canal, which, in 1869, opened a route from the Mediterranean through the canal to the Red Sea, and then to the Indian Ocean, which allowed ships from Europe to sail to the far east without having to make the long and costly journey around the African continent.
Most of the executions during the French Revolution’s reign of terror took place in a large plaza on the Seine in Paris called the Place de la Revolution, now called the Place de la Concorde. This is where the Guillotine was set up, and where Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Charlotte Corday, and Madame du Barry met their ends, among an estimated 20,000 others, including, as the revolution devoured its own, Georges Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Maximilien Robespierre, and Louis de Saint-Just.
If you walk southeast from the Place de la Concorde, along the Seine or through the Tuileries Gardens, you will come to the courtyard of the Louvre, where stands a modern, steel and glass pyramid. I remember when architect I. M. Pei’s design was disclosed to the public in 1984; it was very controversial because it ignored the luscious French architecture of the Louvre, the Tuileries Palace, Les Invalides, and other Parisian landmarks. But perhaps Pei understood something his critics did not: the spiritual connection between France and Egypt.
Madame Guillotine is long gone from Paris’s Place de la Concorde. What now stands in that history-laden spot? One of the two 3,000-year-old Luxor Obelisks (the other is still in Egypt), covered with Egyptian hieroglyphs exalting the reign of Pharoah Ramesses II, often identified as the biblical pharaoh who said, “Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken unto His voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, and moreover I will not let Israel go.”
If your faith in the prophecies is weak, God is willing to clobber you with symbolism. He is generous that way.