God may have given us the explanation that these two witnesses were the same as the olive-trees and the candle-sticks to prevent our being led astray with the supposition that they were actually intelligent agents.  (I speak humanly.) Accepting this statement, the actions of these witnesses here described can be explained only by the figure of speech known as Personification, by which it is proper, under certain conditions, to attribute life, action, and intelligence to inanimate objects.  Thus, the blood of Abel is said to have cried from the ground.  Gen. 4:9, 10.  “The stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it.”  Hab. 2:11.  “The hire of the laborers ... which is of you kept back by fraud crieth:  and the cries ... are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.”  Jas. 5:4.  “The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”  Isa. 55:12.  I would not attempt to vary from the general order and explain these two witnesses by the figure of personification, were it not for the fact that the two olive-trees and the two candle-sticks are here given as a means of explanation; and trees and candle-sticks, we know, are not active, intelligent agents, and consequently do not necessarily symbolize such.

To “hurt” the Word and Spirit of God is to oppose, corrupt, or pervert their testimony and to turn people away from them; and the judgments of Heaven are pronounced in that Word and by that Spirit against such as turn away from the truth unto fables.  They shall have their part in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone.  Rev. 20:15; 22:8.  It is also said of them:  “These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy:  and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.”  This indicates the fact that these were God’s own special witnesses sent in his name and by his authority, as were the prophets of old.  Elijah shut up heaven by prayer; Moses called down the plagues upon Egypt; and these were God’s attestations that they were his divinely commissioned servants.  So these two witnesses had power to shut heaven and to smite the earth with plagues, not literally, but herein is symbolically set forth the fact that they were God’s appointed agents, even though despised and rejected, like Elijah in the midst of apostate Israel and Moses amid idolatrous Egypt, yet, like them, with the seal of Heaven upon their ministry.

In the beginning of this dispensation these two witnesses were the vicars of Christ in his church upon earth.  The word of God and the Spirit of God were the Governors of his people.  At that time they had perfect freedom of action among the children of God; but when the apostasy arose, the governing power of the Word and Spirit of God in the church was gradually usurped by the rising hierarchy, until, finally, men had entire