Revelation 11:5

5. And The imagery of these two verses seems to be based upon the history of Elijah.

Will Rather, wills, or purposes to.

Fire In 2Ki 1:10 ; 2 Kings 1:12, fire came down from heaven, yet at the words of Elijah’s mouth. The powerful physical images under which the divine judgments following the rejected ministries of the evangelic witnesses need not perplex us. Physical miracles of far more gigantic figure are ascribed to the dragon Revelation 12:4, and to the beast Revelation 13:13-15. When even so sober a commentator as Alford is in profound doubt whether these two witnesses are not two literal men, who will in the future perform these physical miracles, and go through a martyrdom and miraculous resurrection after three days and a half, we are at once amazed and amused. Why not make the beast a real animal and his image a real automaton, by which physical miracles are wrought?

The sacred thought that underlies these physical images is easily disclosed by the ordinary laws of analogy. The fire that proceedeth out of the mouth of the evangelical prophet is forked. That is, it is alternative in its power; it must burn up the man’s sins or burn up his soul. He who hurts the prophets, by damaging the truth he represents, is devoured by that fire. It is the man, and not the sin, that dies. That the wages of rejecting the truth is death is so immutable a law that the speaker gives it an emphatically-repeated utterance.