Revelation 11:4

These are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks, standing before the Lord of the earth.

These are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks ... This pinpoints the vision of Zechariah 4:2-6, which contains a vision of the same seven candlesticks, representing the Lord's churches, with which this prophecy began (Revelation 1:12f); but John needed a "two" here instead of a "seven"; so he fastened upon "the two olive trees" of the same vision. These were also said by the angel of Zechariah's vision to be the "Word of the Lord" (Zechariah 4:6), thus making these two olive trees a fitting designation of the Word, as well as being a symbol of the church. For a fuller treatment of this, see in my Commentary on Hebrews, pp. 181-183. Now the two olive trees alone would best be understood as the Old Testament and the New Testament, but John did not use the olive trees alone as the two witnesses; he threw in the "candlesticks," already presented in Revelation as a symbol of the whole church; but, in order to conform the symbol to the requirements of presenting just two witnesses, he mentioned just two, instead of the seven. There is also something else in this. The seven candlesticks of chapter 1 represented the wicked and faithless churches, as well as the true ones, of which there were just two; and, since the two witnesses presented in this chapter are "faithful," the two candlesticks would represent "the faithful portion of the church," as distinguished from all of it, as being one of the faithful witnesses of this chapter. Therefore, the two olive trees represent the word of God (the Old Testament and the New Testament), and the two candlesticks represent the true church (the Smyrna and Philadelphia congregations as contrasted with the remainder of the seven). A reference to the tabulated pairs above will show how close some of the commentators came to this interpretation without ever seeing it. Thus this verse emphatically confirms the identification of these two witnesses as the personified Word of God and the Church of God.

Plummer identified these two witnesses as the Old Testament and the New Testament on the basis of that being their meaning in Zechariah 4:2-6; and that is surely correct as far as it goes. It is the injection of the candlesticks that indicates the Church as one of the witnesses. Of course, the Old Testament and the New Testament are the Word of God. Thus our interpretation is, in a sense, but a refinement of Plummer's.

Leon Morris' comment on this should also be noted: "Since there are seven lampstands, and only two are mentioned here, it is only part of the church which is meant."[38] This is true; only two of the seven churches symbolized by the seven candlesticks of Revelation 1 were true, Smyrna and Philadelphia. This justifies the conclusion, therefore, that the "part" mentioned by Morris is actually the "whole" of the true church. Some, of course, make those two congregations the "two witnesses" of this chapter, but have they prophesied throughout the whole Christian dispensation in sackcloth? No!

Standing before the Lord of the earth ... The stability and faithfulness of the two witnesses is manifest in such a statement as this. God's two faithful witnesses, the Word and the Church, are indestructible. The Word endureth forever, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church.