Revelation 11:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And there was given me By Christ, as appears from Revelation 11:3; a reed As there was shown to Ezekiel, whose vision bore a great resemblance to this, Eze 40:-43. And the angel Which had spoken to me before; stood by me, saying, Rise Probably he was sitting to write; and measure the temple of God and the altar The house and the inner court where the altar stood, in which the priests worshipped God and performed the duties of their office, and into which such as offered private sacrifices for themselves were admitted. A proper representation of the church of God and his true worship, and of such as were true worshippers of him. The reason, it seems, of St. John's being commanded to measure the inner court and the temple was, to show that during all this period there were some true Christians, who conformed to the rule and measure of God's word and worship. “Measuring the servants of God is equivalent to sealing them. The unmeasured tenants of the outer court, and the unsealed men throughout the Roman empire, are alike the votaries of the apostacy; while they that were measured and they that were sealed, are the saints who refused to be partakers of its abominations.” Faber, vol. 2. p. 53. This measuring might allude more particularly to the Reformation from popery, which took place under the sixth trumpet. And one of the moral causes of it was the Othman's taking Constantinople, which occasioned the Greek fugitives to bring their books with them into the more western parts of Europe, and proved the happy cause of the revival of learning; as the revival of learning opened men's eyes, and proved the happy occasion of the Reformation. But though the inner court, which includes the smaller number, was measured, yet the outer court, which implies the far greater part, was left out, (Revelation 11:2,) and rejected, as being in the possession of those who were Christians only in name, but Gentiles in worship and practice, who profaned it with heathenish superstition and idolatry; and they shall tread under foot the holy city They shall trample upon and tyrannise over the church of Christ, which shall be filled with idolaters, infidels, and hypocrites, possessing its most eminent and lucrative places, while true Christians are oppressed in a grievous manner; and that for the space of forty and two months, or twelve hundred and sixty days, thirty days being included in a month, the same period with that afterward termed a time, times, and a half time; that is, a year, two years, and half a year, or three years and a half, according to the ancient year of three hundred and sixty days, all which are prophetic numbers; so that twelve hundred and sixty days are twelve hundred and sixty years. Now it plainly appears from the predictions both of Daniel and St. John, that this period of persecution and trouble has no connection with the persecutions which the church endured from the pagan Roman emperors. We are, however, according to the same prophecies, to look for the promoters of it within the limits of the old Roman empire; and since that empire had embraced Christianity previous to its division into ten kingdoms, the little horn, which symbolizes one of these persecuting powers, and which is represented as being contemporary with the ten kingdoms, must be nominally Christian. And this is no other than the apostate Church of Rome, so minutely described by St. Paul, 2 Thessalonians 2:1, as well as by Daniel and St. John. And the two latter specify with much exactness the era from which the computation of the twelve hundred and sixty years is to be made. Daniel directs us to date them from the time when the saints were, by some public act of the state, delivered into the hand of the little horn: and St. John, in a similar manner, teaches us to date them from the time when the woman, the true church, fled into the wilderness from the face of the serpent; when the mystic city of God began to be trampled under foot by a new race of Gentiles, or idolaters; when the great Roman beast, which had been slain by the preaching of the gospel, revived in its bestial character, by setting up an idolatrous spiritual tyrant in the church; and when the witnesses began to prophesy in sackcloth. A date which, as Mr. Faber justly observes, can have no connection with the mere acquisition of a temporal principality by the pope, but must evidently be the year in which the bishop of Rome was constituted supreme head of the church, with the proud title of bishop of bishops: for, by such an act, the whole church was formally given, by the head of the Roman empire, into the hand of the little horn. This was the year 606, when the reigning emperor, Phocas, the representative of the sixth head of the beast, declared Pope Boniface to be universal bishop; at which time, the saints being delivered into his hand, the twelve hundred and sixty years of the apostacy, in its public and dominant capacity, commenced.