The testimony of the two witnesses--11:3-14. 1. Power unto my two witnesses: The statement I will give in reference to my two witnesses reveals that the speaker here is Christ, the angel of verse 1, the only One who could assume such rank and authority. The assurance I will give power is based on a promise of the Lord to the apostles in Matthew 10:18-20, that when they should be arraigned “ for testimony” they should “ take no thought how or what” to speak; and as in Mark 13:11, “ take no thought beforehand, neither do ye premeditate” ; and as in Luke 12:12, “ the Holy Spirit shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.” This is the power here given to the witnesses. The two witnesses are representative of the prophets and apostles whose testimony was “ this gospel of the kingdom” which should be “ preached in all the world for a witness” before the end should come-- Matthew 24:14. The dual testimony is based on the requirement of the law in Deuteronomy 19:15 that “ at the mouth of two witnesses shall the matter be established,” and repeated by Jesus in John 8:17, “ it is also written in your law that the testimony of two men is true” ; the allusion to which is made also in Hebrews 10:28, “ he that despised Moses’ law died . . . under two or three witnesses.” These are the witnesses of Mat 23:31-37, of whom the Lord said: “ Ye are the children of them which killed the prophets . . . behold I send unto you prophets . . . and some of them ye shall kill . . . crucify . . . scourge . . . and persecute . . . 0 Jerusalem . . . that killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee.” They are representative of those mentioned further by Stephen in Acts 7:52, “ which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?’ By the prophets of the old dispensation and the apostles of the new covenant, the testimony, divine revelation, was completed and by “ the two witnesses” thereby established. 2. Prophesy . . . clothed in sackcloth: The word sackcloth was of Hebrew origin and was interfused into every language as a symbol of ill-fortune. It was the suit of mourning in death, the garb of humility and penitence under judgment, and the clothing of suffering in calamities and persecutions-as so mentioned in Job 16:15; Psalms 30:11; Jeremiah 4:8; Isaiah 29:2; and Zechariah 13:4. The speaker in this vision told John that his two witnesses should prophesy clothed in sackcloth, as a sign of great affliction and as a token of the extreme suffering that their testimony should cause to come upon them, portraying retrospectively the altar scenes of chapter 6:9-11, and prospectively all of the tribulations yet to be unfolded, of which the two witnesses were representatives. 3. A thousand two hundred three-score: The forty-two months equal twelve hundred sixty days, computed mathematically (42 x 30 ==1260), which is in the text declared to be "a thousand two hundred and three score days.” The reader is requested to turn back to the comments on verse 2 and compare again the parallel between Isaiah 7:1-25 : l-9 and the forty-two months of Revelation for an example of exact mathematical application. It designated the period of time for the Gentiles to tread Jerusalem, the holy city, under foot, which was accomplished and fulfilled in the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans. It is also the appointed time for the two witnesses “ clothed in sackcloth” to prophesy, in the appropriate garb of the prophets during the time of these woes. That is what the angel told John these representative witnesses should do, and it agrees with what the Lord also said should be done in the parallel passages previously cited in Matthew 24:14; Mark 13:10; Luke 21:12-15-24. It is evident that the period of the treading down of Jerusalem was the time of the testimony of the witnesses also.