The Two Olive Trees of Zechariah

 

 

Joshua the High Priest, depicted in Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum

We can find another key piece of scriptural evidence which may help to identify the Two Witnesses as the Angelic Pope and the Great Monarch, by studying the Book of Zechariah. Chapters 3-4 of the Book of Zechariah provide the primary basis for the background details of the Two Witnesses of Rev 11. It is here that we find the first biblical reference to these figures as the two olive trees that stand before the Lord of the whole earth. Only in the Book of Zechariah, these two olive trees are identified with two historical figures, from whom we can glean some additional information concerning the Two Witnesses - Joshua the High Priest and Zerubbabel. In identifying the Two Witnesses with Joshua the High Priest and Zerubbabel as detailed in the Book of Zechariah, the Apocalypse suggests that we should study this portion of the Bible in greater detail in order to flesh out a fuller picture of the personal attributes of these two end-time prophets.
Joshua (sometimes spelled Jeshua) was the first person to be chosen as High Priest at the end of the Babylonian captivity. After conquering the Babylonian Empire in 538BC, King Cyrus of Persia issued an edict declaring that the Jews were free to return to the land of Israel and rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem:

In the first year of Cyrus the king, Cyrus the king issued a decree: Concerning the house of God at Jerusalem, let the house be rebuilt, the place where sacrifices were offered, and let its foundations be retained. Its height shall be sixty cubits and its breadth sixty cubits, with three layers of great stones and one layer of timber. Let the cost be paid from the royal treasury. And also let the gold and silver vessels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple that is in Jerusalem and brought to Babylon, be restored and brought back to the temple that is in Jerusalem, each to its place. You shall put them in the house of God.”
(Ezra 6:3-5)

After King Cyrus had permitted the Jewish exiles in Babylon to return to Jerusalem, Joshua the High Priest travelled back to the Holy City along with Zerubbabel, who was appointed governor of the Persian province of Judah by King Darius I of Persia. Although Zerubbabel was the grandson of King Jehoiachin of Judah, and was thus the rightful heir to the Davidic throne, he could not ascend the kingship of Judah because its territory had been subsumed into the wider Achaemenid Persian Empire.  After Zerubbabel was made governor of Judah, he set about rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar in 588BC. This is considered by biblical historians to be the beginning of the Second Temple Period, which lasted up to its destruction in 70AD.

Now the prophets, Haggai and Zechariah the son of Iddo, prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem, in the name of the God of Israel who was over them. Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak arose and began to rebuild the house of God that is in Jerusalem, and the prophets of God were with them, supporting them.
(Ezra 5:1-2)

It will be worth studying how Joshua and Zerubbabel are presented in the relevant portion of the Book of Zechariah below, in order to gain a better insight into the respective roles of the Two Witnesses:

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the LORD said to Satan, “The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” And to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.” And I said, “Let them put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the LORD was standing by.
 And the angel of the LORD solemnly assured Joshua, “Thus says the LORD of hosts: If you will walk in my ways and keep my charge, then you shall rule my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you the right of access among those who are standing here. Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, you and your friends who sit before you, for they are men who are a sign: behold, I will bring my servant the Branch. For behold, on the stone that I have set before Joshua, on a single stone with seven eyes, I will engrave its inscription, declares the LORD of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of this land in a single day. In that day, declares the LORD of hosts, every one of you will invite his neighbor to come under his vine and under his fig tree.”
And the angel who talked with me came again and woke me, like a man who is awakened out of his sleep. And he said to me, “What do you see?” I said, “I see, and behold, a lampstand all of gold, with a bowl on the top of it, and seven lamps on it, with seven lips on each of the lamps that are on the top of it. And there are two olive trees by it, one on the right of the bowl and the other on its left.” And I said to the angel who talked with me, “What are these, my lord?” Then the angel who talked with me answered and said to me, “Do you not know what these are?” I said, “No, my lord.” Then he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts. Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you shall become a plain. And he shall bring forward the top stone amid shouts of ‘Grace, grace to it!’”
 Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also complete it. Then you will know that the LORD of hosts has sent me to you. For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice, and shall see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel.
 “These seven are the eyes of the LORD, which range through the whole earth.” Then I said to him, “What are these two olive trees on the right and the left of the lampstand?” And a second time I answered and said to him, “What are these two branches of the olive trees, which are beside the two golden pipes from which the golden oil is poured out?” He said to me, “Do you not know what these are?” I said, “No, my lord.” Then he said, “These are the two anointed ones who stand by the Lord of the whole earth.”
(Zech 3-4)

If we compare the above passage to Rev 11:8 below, we can see some immediate parallels:

Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, “Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two months. And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.”
 These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. And if anyone would harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes. If anyone would harm them, this is how he is doomed to be killed. They have the power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire.
(Rev 11:1-6)

In the above symbolic vision, the Book of Zechariah depicts Joshua the High Priest changing from the sullied garments of the exile in Babylon, to the pure vestments of the Jewish restoration. So by making a direct comparison between Joshua the High Priest and Zerubbabel with the Two Witnesses, the Book of Revelation suggests that these two end-time prophets would arise after a time of apostasy - which is symbolised in the Book of Zechariah by the captivity in Babylon. The length of the Babylonian captivity was prophetically announced by the prophet Jeremiah as a punishment which would last for a period of 70 years:

“Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts: Because you have not obeyed my words, behold, I will send for all the tribes of the north, declares the LORD, and for Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants, and against all these surrounding nations. I will devote them to destruction, and make them a horror, a hissing, and an everlasting desolation. Moreover, I will banish from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the grinding of the millstones and the light of the lamp. This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, declares the LORD, making the land an everlasting waste. I will bring upon that land all the words that I have uttered against it, everything written in this book, which Jeremiah prophesied against all the nations."
(Jer 25:8-13)

Counting backwards 70 years from when King Cyrus issued his decree allowing for the return of the Jews in 538BC, this would suggest that the period of God's punishment for Judah's apostasy began around the year 608/609BC. The date of 609BC is highly significant in this regard, since this was the year of the death of the good King Josiah of Judah, following the Battle of Megiddo. An event which would ultimately bring about the complete demise of the kingdom of Judah. The successors to Josiah, notably his sons Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, made a series of poor political allegiances that led to the sack of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar circa 598 and 588BC. So it appears that Jeremiah's prophecy of the 70 years of desolation should be counted from the events of the Battle of Megiddo in 609BC.

While the Book of Zechariah depicts Joshua the High Priest changing into the pure priestly vestments after a period of 70 years of desolation, the Book of Revelation describes the coming of the Two Witnesses in the immediate context of the prophecy of the abomination of desolation - when the Holy City would trampled under the feet of "gentiles" for a period of 1,260 days. We have previously noted how the 1,260 "days" equal 42 months, and that this period is one and the same as the "time, times and half a time" mentioned in the Book of Daniel and the Apocalypse. The "time, times and half a time" corresponds to the three and a half years of drought which was ended by Elijah's contest with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. It also represents the period of 70 years of desolation
being "cut short", since 3.5 is one half of seven. During his eschatological discourse on the Mount of Olives, Christ had promised that the period of the abomination of desolation would be "cut short" for the sake of the elect:

 “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.
(Matt 24:15-22)

On one (futurist) layer of interpretation, this period of the "abomination of desolation" can be equated with the time of the Great Apostasy, and the Three Days of Darkness foretold in various private revelations. The coming of the Angelic Pope to restore the Church after the Three Days of Darkness deliberately parallels the three hours of darkness descending upon Jerusalem during the Crucifixion (Mark 15:33), and the "new dawn" in the Resurrection of Jesus on the third day. In particular, it strongly echoes Christ's promise to rebuild the destroyed Temple (representing His Body) in "three days":

So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
(John 2:18-22)

Given that St. Paul describes the Church as the mystical body of Christ (e.g. 1Cor 12:12ff), it would seem that there is another layer of meaning behind Christ's promise to rebuild His Temple after "three days". We can find another important instance of a religious revival after "three days" in the Book of Hosea, which also echoes the Resurrection of Christ:

“Come, let us return to the LORD;
for he has torn us, that he may heal us;
he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will raise us up,
that we may live before him.
(Hosea 6:1-2)

We can perhaps find some further significance here in that it seems that the beginning of the Second Pentecost can be traced back to the turn of the third millennium, which was marked by the Signs in the Sky described at the opening of the sixth seal. This recalls the words of St. Peter:

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
(2 Peter 3:8)

The turn of the third millennium marks the dawn of the "third day" according to the words of St. Peter.
As Sr. Lorraine pointed out in the previous post, there may be an additional connection between the "three days" of the Resurrection and the time period of the 1,260 days by using gematria. Using isopsephy (the Greek version of gematria), the numerical value of the Greek word τριών (trion) "three" is 1,260. In isopsephy, the letter tau (t) equals 300, the letter rho (r) is 100, iota (i) 10,
omega (o) is 800, while the letter nu (n) equals 50. Added together, this gives the total of 1,260. So the period of the Great Apostasy/abomination of desolation is variously represented by "three days", 1,260 days, 42 months, or a "time, times and half a time" - which represents Jeremiah's 70 years being "cut short".

The Apocalypse informs us that the Two Witnesses come after the gentiles have trampled on the Holy City for the period of the abomination (given first as 42 "months"), and that their own ministry would last for the same amount of time (1,260 days):  ..."they will trample the holy city for forty-two months. And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” (Rev 11:2-3) So we can see a sharp division here, and that the Two Witnesses arrive on the scene in the midst of the 70 year period of desolation. The Two Witnesses arrive in the middle of this period of trial to cut this allotted time period short for the sake of the elect, so that the "fullness of the gentiles" may be saved when the Gospel is spread to the ends of the earth. "And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come". (Matt 24:14)
Bearing these insights in mind, we can now back to discuss the significance of Joshua the High Priest and Zerubbabel in the interpretation of the Two Witnesses of Rev 11. First, it should be noted that symbolically speaking, the Roman Catholic pontiff is the best modern day equivalent of the Jewish High Priest, since for Catholics the pope is the Pontifex Maximus (Latin "high priest"). The Jewish High Priest was the top ranking priestly official in the Temple at Jerusalem, and was tasked with performing the sacrificial rituals in the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement. Given that the role of the High Priest in Judaism instantly brings to mind the role of the Bishop of Rome in Roman Catholicism, it is no great leap to suggest that Joshua the High Priest in the vision of Zechariah can be equated with a pope in an eschatological context.
There are also some parallels between Zerubbabel and the Great Monarch, given that he was the rightful heir to the lost kingdom of Judah. The Great Monarch of various private revelations is similarly described as the rightful heir to the now lost French Monarchy or the Holy Roman Empire - which ended with the abdication of Emperor Francis II in 1806. So given that the Two Witnesses of the Apocalypse are based on the coming of the High Priest of the Temple of Jerusalem and the heir to the lost Davidic kingdom after a period of desolation, this would further suggest that these two end-prophets are in fact the Angelic Pope and Great Monarch of Catholic prophecy - who are foretold to restore the Church from a state of apostasy before the coming of the Antichrist.

Zechariah's vision of Joshua opens with the rather striking image of Satan standing next to the High Priest, who is dressed in sullied vestments. The prophet sees Satan accusing the High Priest (representing Judah itself) of his sins, before he is redeemed by God and allowed to wear clean apparel:

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the LORD said to Satan, “The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” And to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.” And I said, “Let them put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments. And the angel of the LORD was standing by.
(Zech 3:1-5)

The central themes of this passage are repeated very closely in the description of the eschatological fall of Satan in the Apocalypse:

And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.
(Rev 12:10)

In the Book of Revelation, the salvation, power and kingdom of God (i.e. the Second Pentecost)
arrives once Satan has been thrown down from his adversarial position in the heavenly court, and cast to the earth. In Zechariah's vision, Satan has been allowed to test Joshua - and his sins are visually represented for all to see in the soiled priestly vestments. But just as Satan is thrown down from heaven after accusing the Christian brethren day and night in Rev 12; Satan is rebuked in Zechariah's vision, and Joshua the High Priest is allowed to wear clean robes at the end of the Babylonian exile.

The Book of Zechariah describing Joshua the High Priest changing from garments soiled by the apostasy of Judah, to new clean vestments in the restoration at the end of the Babylonian exile, recalls several similar passages in the Book of Revelation which are related to themes of redemption and the Second Pentecost.

Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels.
(Rev 3:4-5)

I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.
(Rev 3:18)

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
(Rev 7:13-14)

Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
(Rev 19:7-8)

As we have noted before, the theme of the Church being dressed in soiled robes is contained in the visions of St. Hildegard of Bingen:

In the year of our Lord’s incarnation 1170, I had been lying on my sick-bed for a long time when, fully conscious in body and in mind, I had a vision of a woman of such beauty that the human mind is unable to comprehend. She stretched in height from earth to heaven. Her face shone with exceeding brightness and her gaze was fixed on heaven. She was dressed in a dazzling robe of white silk and draped in a cloak, adorned with stones of great price. On her feet she wore shoes of onyx. But her face was stained with dust, her robe was ripped down the right side, her cloak had lost its sheen of beauty and her shoes had been blackened. And she herself, in a voice loud with sorrow, was calling to the heights of heaven, saying, ‘Hear, heaven, how my face is sullied; mourn, earth, that my robe is torn; tremble, abyss, because my shoes are blackened!’

(Letter to Werner von Kirchheim and his Priestly Community: PL 197, 269ff.).

The above prophetic vision of St. Hildegard appears to have been foremost in mind during Pope Benedict XVI's famous Way of the Cross sermon in 2005:

Lord, your Church often seems like a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side. In your field we see more weeds than wheat. The soiled garments and face of your Church throw us into confusion. Yet it is we ourselves who have soiled them! It is we who betray you time and time again, after all our lofty words and grand gestures. Have mercy on your Church; within her too, Adam continues to fall. When we fall, we drag you down to earth, and Satan laughs, for he hopes that you will not be able to rise from that fall; he hopes that being dragged down in the fall of your Church, you will remain prostrate and overpowered. But you will rise again. You stood up, you arose and you can also raise us up. Save and sanctify your Church. Save and sanctify us all.

As Pope Benedict was well aware in alluding to the prophecies of St. Hildegard, her vision of the Church clad in soiled garments ends with the reversal of her fortunes, when she once again shines forth in her full radiant glory:

Behold, the feet of the aforementioned female image appeared to be white, giving out a brightness above that of the sun. I heard a voice from heaven saying to me: "Even though all things on earth are tending toward their end, so hardships and calamities is bowed down to its End, nevertheless, the Spouse of my Son, though much weakened in her children, will never be destroyed either by the heralds of the Son of Perdition or by the Destroyer himself, however much she will be attacked by them. At the End of time she will arise more powerful and more secure; she will appear more beautiful and shining so that she may go forth in this way more sweetly and more agreeably to the embraces of her Beloved.
(Scivias 3:11; Translated by B McGinn, Visions of the End, pp101-102)

The major difference between the visions of St. Hildegard and the Book of Zechariah is the manner in which the Church is personified. In St. Hildegard's visions the Church is represented by the woman in soiled robes who is restored to her former glory, while in Zech 3, the Church is personified in the Jewish High Priest. But if Joshua the High Priest represents the pope in Zechariah's vision, this opens up another intriguing possibility. The image of Satan standing next to Joshua in order to accuse him of his shortcomings is directly based on the story of Job - which in turn forms the primary basis of the vision of Pope Leo XIII. Could this explain why this particular private revelation was given directly to a pope? Usually private revelations are bestowed to visionaries from more humble origins, in keeping with Matt 12:25:  "At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will." The choice of the pope as the recipient of this vision appears to be a deliberate attempt to connect the imagery here of Satan accusing Job to its parallel verse in Zech 3. If the vision of Pope Leo XIII is related to Zechariah's vision of Joshua the High Priest and the story of Job, this would help to reinforce the point that the chief scriptural basis for the Two Witnesses of Rev 11 is intimately connected to the prophecies of the Angelic Pope. The Babylonian exile in Zech 3 and Joshua wearing soiled garments would thus represent the trials of Job, and correspond to the "little while" given to Satan in Rev 20 - which ultimately results in the Great Apostasy/abomination of desolation. But in the end, Satan is rebuked, and Joshua the High Priest - one of the olive trees standing before the Lord of all the earth, is allowed to adorn the pure vestments of the Second Pentecost.