The time and occasion.—“When they shall have perfected their testimony, ὁταν τελεσωσι την μαρτυριαν αυτων, the Wild Beast shall make war against them.” To explain the meaning of the clause, “When they shall have perfected,” (ὁταν τελεσωσι,) &c., and show how it marks time and occasion, will need a little careful critical investigation: nor can we proceed satisfactorily to our historical inquiry without in the first place deciding on it.

The truth is that few clauses in the Apocalyptic prophecy have occasioned expositors so much trouble as this. In our authorized English version it is translated, “And when they shall have finished their testimony;” as if referring chronologically to the end of the 1260 years of the witnessing. And, in so far as the clause itself is concerned, that, I at once admit, may probably at first sight suggest itself as the most natural mode of translating and understanding it. But, on comparing it with the context, it seems to me equally plain that a discerning and thoughtful reader will see reason for concluding that such cannot be here the intended meaning.—For, in the first place, it would imply either that the wild Beast from the abyss never before made war against them; a supposition contrary to what is said elsewhere of this Wild Beast, both in Apoc. 13 and 17:1—or that all its long previous wars (not against other parties with which the prophecy might have no concern, but) against them, the two witnesses for Christ, are here passed over in silence; an omission scarcely credible, considering the importance of the subject.2—Further there is this yet stronger objection to the above-stated translation, that it makes the 1260 years expire too soon. For the Witnesses’ 1260 days of witnessing in sackcloth coincide surely with the Gentiles’ 1260 days of treading down the holy city, and the Beast’s 1260 of power;3 so as that the latter must end when the former do: whereas, at the epoch in question, those Gentiles, and the Beast heading them, are evidently quite at the height of their triumph and power.1—Moreover the translation in question makes the Witnesses’ 1260 days expire a considerable time before the sounding of the seventh Trumpet. For, after the statement (so translating) in the verse before us of the finishing of the 1260 days’ mystic period, there is represented as subsequently occurring the Wild Beast’s war against the Witnesses, their death, their resurrection, their ascension,—all consecutive events, not contemporaneous; then the effects and development of an earthquake, commencing about the time of the ascension of the Witnesses; then the termination of the second woe; then (not immediately, but after an interval)2 the sounding of the seventh Trumpet. But our prophecy marks the seventh Trumpet æra as that, specifically, in which “they that corrupt or destroy the earth” are themselves to be destroyed;3 i. e. very specially, as appears afterwards, the Woman of the seven hills, or mystic Babylon,4 and Beast Antichrist her paramour. And so Apoc. 10:7 distinctly; saying that “in the days of the 7th Trumpet the mystery of God (including that of his Witnesses prophesying in sackcloth) shall be finished;” not before. No doubt their destruction may involve certain preliminary consuming judgments, ending in the final catastrophe, such as of the seven last plagues, or seven Vials. But, even so, still this seventh Trumpet, as that of the last Woe, must I think be considered to include them.1 So that its sounding would seem at the least to define the primary end of the 1260 days, or years, of the Beast’s authority and success.—A conclusion this confirmed by reference to Daniel’s parallel prophecy. For there the Beast’s time times and half a time, or 1260 days, of successful empire, is terminated by the establishment of Christ’s reign with his saints:2 the establishment of which reign is rejoiced over in the seventh Trumpet’s heavenly song of pæan, as the result of that Trumpet’s judgments.—To my own mind these objections drawn from the prophecy itself, quite irrespectively of any particular theory of interpretation, appear all but decisive against understanding the phrase ὁταν τελεσωσι to signify the end of the 1260 days, or years, of the Witnesses prophesying in sackcloth.—To year-day interpreters of the historic school, such as believe that the two witnesses symbolize a line of witnesses for Christ against Papal error, but (translating as above) look for the Witnesses’ death as still future, there may be addressed the further argument, that, if their predicted death be even now future, then the prophecy, in its progress to a figuration of it, must have silently past over that mightiest of events in the history of the Christian witness against Popery, I mean the glorious Reformation;—a thing to my own mind utterly incredible: besides the passing over in similar silence of that mightiest of modern political events, the great French Revolution; itself an æra in our world’s history. For, in the interval between the prophetic figuration of the Euphratean Turks’ destruction of “the third of men,” or Greek empire, accomplished in 1453, and that of the Witnesses’ warring down by the Beast from the Abyss, and consequent death and resurrection, which, on the hypothesis spoken of, is even now, some 70 years after that great Revolution, still future, there occurs nothing in the prophecy but the vision of the rainbow-crowned Angel, and his narration to St. John about the two witnesses’ general character and history.—Moreover does it seem likely, after the present missionary spread of the gospel, that there will ever be a total suppression of it; or suppression as nearly total as before the Reformation?

It is not needful that we should stop at the different renderings of the clause that have been proposed, instead of the above, by different expositors; as Mede, Daubuz, Faber. Objections, grammatical or of some other nature, occur against them all.1 It will be better at once to state what. I trust will approve itself to the reader as the true meaning; from its satisfying all the requirements of both text and context. And really, on re-consideration, it seems to me very simple.

Let it be remembered then respecting the verb τελεω that to finish is by no means its only, or only frequent, sense; but, quite as frequently, to complete, or perfect.1 For τελεω means, accordantly with its etymology, to bring to a τελος. And since (to use the words of the Lexicographers Scott and Liddell) “the strict signification of τελος is not the ending of a departed state, but the arrival of a complete and perfect one,”2 therefore τελεω signifies most properly to bring to such a state of completion and perfectness.—Now in multitudinous cases, more especially where it is matter that is acted on, when the work has been completed the operation of the agencies employed ceases; and thus to complete, or perfect, involves the sense also of to finish. So, to take a Scriptural illustration or two, when the work of creation, or when that of building the tabernacle, or the temple, was completed.1—But not so (at least not necessarily so) when the thing perfected is of such a nature, whether it be a quality or a function of some living person acting, or acted on, as to admit of, if not to imply, a continuation of the thing perfected, and of their acting to its continuation who perfected it, after the attainment of the state of perfectness. For example, in the case of the young woman personified in Ezek. 16, it is supposed evidently that, after she had had her beauty perfected, she still continued to be adorned with and to exhibit that beauty.2 In the cases described by Æschylus or Pindar of a man’s prosperity and happiness as perfected, who thinks that they intend to imply its finishing and termination thereupon?3 When the athlete, spoken of by Pindar, had had his strength and valour perfected, he is still afterwards supposed by the poet to have continued to enjoy and exercise it.4 Again, the virtuous man eulogized by Xenophon as perfected in temperance, would not, of course, cease to practise that virtue after attaining to perfection in it.5 And the same of those on whom the sacred writer urges the charge to “perfect holiness in the fear of God.”1 Would they, when holiness was thus perfected, bring that holiness to an ending, whether in this life, or in the better life to come? In all which examples, let it be observed, it is the same verb τελεω, as here, or its compound synonyms συντελεω or επιτελεω, that are used.—Yet again in James 1:15 we read, “Sin, when it is perfected, ἡ αμαρτια αποτελεσθεια, bringeth forth death.” Yet not so, witness the case of Adam, as that the sinning would end, after it had been perfected in act. Similar to which last is a clause in Dan. 9:24, as explained by Theodoret. “Seventy hebdomads,” it is there said, “are determined on thy people, and on the holy city, ἑως του παλαιωθηναι το παραπτωμα, και του τελεσθηναι αμαρτιαν· so Theodoret’s copy.2 On which he thus comments: αντι του, ἑως αν αυξηθῃ αυτων το δυσσεβες τολμημα, και τελος λαβῃ ἡ ἁμαρτια· λεγει δε αμαρτιαν τελειουμενην, και παραπτωμα παλαιουμενον, ειτʼ ουν αυξανομενον, και εις εσχατον αφικνουμενον, τον κατα του κυριου τολμηθεντα σταυρον. That is to say, he explains the phrase τελεσθηναι αμαρτιαν, not as the finishing of sin, so as our English translation of the corresponding Hebrew understands it, but as the perfecting of the Jews’ national sin, and bringing it to its culminating point, and height of aggravation, in the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet not so as that their sin should thereupon cease. On the contrary, through the apostles’ time, as the Acts and Epistles of the New Testament represent it, their sin in its aggravation was perpetuated;3 and afterwards also, as Theodoret well knew, down to his time. And, as by Theodoret, so was the expression in Daniel explained by Eusebius before him: Επι της κατα τον Χριστον τολμηθεισης των Ιουδαιων επιβουλης συνετελεσθη αυτων ἡ αμαρτια, και ἡ προς τον Θεον αθεσια τελος ειληφε.4—Once more let me illustrate from the history of Sergius which we were lately reviewing, as narrated by Photius and P. Siculus. Alike by the one and the other he is spoken of as at length perfected in impiety, perfected as an instrument of Satan, by the Paulikian woman’s teaching:1 the result being that, instead of that perfected impiety then terminating, it was carried out into active operation forthwith, and afterwards, even to his life’s end.

My conclusion is that, much in the same way, the two Apocalyptic Witnesses’ μαρτυρια is viewed in the prophecy as a thing of growth: and that so soon as, having gone through its preliminary stages, it should have come to embrace all the subjects of protest that it was intended to embrace, and shown forth also all its evidence of divine inspiration, so soon it might be said, according to the mind of the Spirit, that the testimony was perfected, or had reached its culminating point; yet not so as to imply that the testifying was to be then at an end; but rather that it was thenceforth to be continued in its complete and perfected form.

But what then the intended parts, or acts, of this μαρτυρια? Obviously a protestation for Christ against each of the successively developed, and enforced, antichristian errors of the apostasy; errors as defined (not by a commentator so as to suit his own hypothesis of interpretation, but) by the Apocalyptic prophecy itself:—viz. the sacramental error, allusively noted in Apoc. 7, whereby the priest’s opus operatum in the sacrament was made the source of life and light to the soul, instead of Christ’s Spirit, and the Church visible very much mistaken for Christ’s true Church;—the substitution of the mediatorship and merits of departed saints, which chapter 8. hints at, in place of Christ’s mediatorship, merits, and atonement;—the idolatry, dæmonworship, sorceries, thefts, fornications, and murders of the apostate church and system, specified in chapter 9.;—finally, the support and headship of the system by the Romish Church and Romish Bishop on the seven hills, with his seven thunders and voice of Antichrist, figured or described in chapters 10., 13., and also 17. These are the successively developed characteristics of the apostasy noted in the Apocalypse. The protestation of Christ’s witnesses had of course to embrace them all.1 And so soon as it might have done this, and brought to bear upon it the full evidence of holy Scripture, so soon, I conceive, they might be said to have perfected their testimony, in the intended sense of the phrase before us.

But did then the testimony of those in whom we have thought to trace Christ’s witnesses advance till it had embraced all those points; and this with the full light of Scripture made to bear on them? If so, was the epoch a marked epoch; and did war from the Popedom against them mark its arrival? Such in fact was the case: indeed so strikingly so, that it is the palpable coincidence of this epoch of completion in the witnesses’ testimony with that of the Papal war commencing against them, that, without one’s thinking or seeking for it, might well force this interpretation on the mind.

From early times we have seen that the witnesses both of Eastern and Western origin made protestation against the sacramental error and the mediatorship of saints; setting forth Christ as the one source of life, Christ as the one mediator and intercessor for sinful men; and his Church of the faithful as the one and only Church of the promises: also against the idolatries, sorceries, thefts, fornications, murders, which characterized the apostate priesthood and Church of professing Christendom.1 But against Rome, Papal Rome, as the predicted head of the apostasy, and Babylon and Harlot of the Apocalypse, and against the Roman Popes as Antichrist, they for centuries protested not. Nothing meets us nearer to a protestation on this point, than the Paulikians’ saying, “We are Christians, ye Romans,” and protest (as I view it) against Peter as apostate,2 until we come to Berenger’s notable statement, made in the xith century, “that the Romish Church was a church of malignants, and its see not the apostolic seat, but that of Satan.”3 And that was but an insulated voice; and made by one who shrunk from acting the confessor. It was a hint however not lost. A century later came the time of Peter Valdes and his disciples. The Noble Lesson, written by one of them, as we have seen, somewhere between 1170 and 1200, marks in what it says of Antichrist a preparation of mind, indeed more than preparation, to make the great step, and recognise the predicted Babylon, Harlot, and Antichrist in Rome, and the Popedom;4 a step of advance actually taken ere the termination of the xiith century by the Waldenses, orthodox associated Paulikians, and other sectaries.5 Just at which time also the mighty act was done of the translation and circulation of the Scriptures, far and wide, in the vulgar tongue. Then the witness-testimony might indeed be considered to have been brought to its culminating point, and perfected.

And what then followed? Forthwith the Popedom—of which previously the separate members alone, acting independently of the Head, had moved against heretics—roused itself collectively in the 3rd Lateran General Council of 1179, and declared war against them. As Mede observes in one place, though without any reference to the clause or the interpretation before us; “Never before this time (i. e. the xiith century) had suspicion arisen of the Papacy being Antichrist.”2 And. in another; “The Beast made not war against the witnesses immediately from the commencement of his existence, but in the xiith (the same xiith) century: at the which time the war was made by him against both Albigenses, Waldenses, and saints of Christ called, as it might be, by whatever other name.”


Elliott, E. B. (1862). Horæ Apocalypticæ or A Commentary on the Apocalypse, Critical and Historical (Fifth Edition, Vol. 2, pp. 411–423). Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday.