The Witnesses and the Woe

John sees an angel who shares a likeness to Christ offering a scroll to be eaten. The scroll enables John to prophecy about “peoples and nations and languages and kings.” What follows is a vision of the Church as two witnesses, witnesses who on the one hand are trampled and defeated by their enemies, and yet at the very same time, announce the judgment and salvation of God. Using a clever literary device, John shows us that the very same age in which the Church is humiliated and marginalized and misrepresented and even killed is the very same age in which the Lamb is conquering through the very same Church.