Revelation 11: Inner Witnesses and States of Consciousness

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Quick Insights

The reed used to measure is the inner standard by which attention and belief assess what belongs to private sanctity and what is public surrender.
The two witnesses are aspects of conscious testimony: persistent, disciplined states of attention that speak and hold form against prevailing disbelief.
Death and resurrection in view of the crowd dramatize the collapse of an identity and its imaginative rebirth, observed by the parts of ourselves that once mocked or relinquished hope.
The final opening of the heavenly temple and the storms that accompany it portray the release of higher conviction into lived reality and the clearing out of old patterns by intense inner change.

What is the Main Point of Revelation 11?

This chapter depicts the drama of inner sovereignty: a measuring of what is sacred, the endurance of inner witnesses that proclaim truth, their apparent defeat and surprising return, and the ultimate revelation that the kingdoms of inner experience belong to the imagination that shapes them. It teaches that conscious attention and imaginative will determine what remains private and what becomes public reality.

What is the Spiritual Meaning of Revelation 11?

Measuring the temple is the act of setting a personal boundary of sacredness. When attention picks up the reed, it chooses what parts of experience are to be cultivated and preserved as holy. The exclusion of the outer court is not rejection of the world but a recognition that some faculties are given over to others; those outer facades are governed by collective opinion and cannot be measured by the same interior standard. This is the inward decision to value inner devotion above social approval. The two witnesses embody the sustained exercises of attention and conviction that prophesy reality into being. Clothed in sackcloth, they represent humility, stripped of egoic adornments, speaking in a disciplined voice that can change conditions: withholding the rain of doubt, transmuting waters into redemptive meaning, and calling down consequences upon entrenched falsehoods. Their power is psychological: the ability to withhold consent from negative imaginal patterns until they wither, and the capacity to call forth remedies out of concentrated belief. Their apparent death and exposure in the public square dramatize a common interior episode: the collapse of a committed imaginative state under pressure, judged and mocked by the many voices that favor safety and sameness. The three and a half days of abandonment reflect the felt duration of despair when conviction seems extinguished. Yet the renewed breath that enters them is the spontaneous influx of life when imagination reasserts itself, bringing them to their feet again. This resurrection instills awe in the onlookers, revealing that reality responds to resumed attention and that what looks finished can be revived by renewed inner witnessing.

Key Symbols Decoded

The reed and temple are measures of attention and the inner sanctuary where feeling and thought meet. Measuring is the discipline of observing which impulses are allowed to inhabit the sacred inner space and which belong to the external world of opinion. The outer court left unmeasured symbolizes the social persona and mass habit that cannot be reclaimed by solitary conviction without the right measure of attention. The two witnesses, olive trees, and candlesticks are images of creative faculties standing in the light of awareness. Fire that proceeds from the mouth and plagues that follow are metaphors for the consequences of statements made from conviction: words issued from living belief change perception and therefore effect experience. The earthquake, thunder, and hail that close the scene are the inner upheavals that dismantle old structures, forcing a reassessment and surrender to a newly realized sovereignty of imagination.

Practical Application

Begin by taking the reed into conscious use: sit quietly and name the parts of your life you intend to keep sacred to imagination and feeling, then refuse to measure the outer court by the same standards. Practice a daily discipline of witnessing by speaking two short truths to yourself each morning from a humbled and earnest place, imagining them as already real. When doubt or public opinion seems to kill those witnessings, allow the interval of silence without panic; treat the three and a half days as a symbolic pause in which you neither capitulate nor congratulate yourself. When the spirit of life returns, amplify it by a simple imaginative enactment: see those witnesses rise, breathe life into the image, and feel the consequence ripple through your body. Let the resulting fear in the parts that resisted become a teacher rather than an enemy; let the quake within rearrange priorities so that imagination's kingdom gains practical reign. Over time, measure your inner temple regularly, tend the witnesses with humility, and use directed imagination as the active force that reshapes both inner states and the outer shapes they eventually produce.

The Inner Drama of Witness: Revelation 11’s Twofold Testimony

Revelation 11 reads as a concentrated psychological drama played out entirely within consciousness. Its scenes are not outer historical events but the shifting states of the self as imagination and attention fight, die, and are reborn. Read this chapter as an inner map: the measuring reed, the temple, the two witnesses, the beast, the three and a half days, the resurrection, the trumpet and the opening of the heavenly temple are all stages in the creative work of human awareness.

Begin with the reed and the angel who bids you rise and measure the temple and the altar. The reed is attention, that slender tool with which you measure your inner sanctuary. The angel is the directive of awareness—the faculty that tells you to look, to inspect, to bring your imagination to bear on what is sacred in you. To measure the temple is to examine your conscious life: the thoughts that constitute your altar, the habitual worships of feeling and belief. The instruction to leave out the outer court and not measure it is deliberate: the outer court stands for public opinion, the crowd ideas, the projections of others that are given to the Gentiles. These outer opinions will trample the holy city so long as you cede authority to them. In other words, do not allow the outer, reactive mind to define the dimensions of your inner sanctuary.

The holy city that is trodden under foot for forty-two months describes a period in which the sacred center of identity is suppressed by the outer world's narrative. Forty-two months is a symbolic length of time, a bounded epoch in consciousness when the inner divine city is allowed to be overrun by habitual belief. It is not a literal calendar but an inner contract with limitation. The remedy begins when attention picks up the reed and measures again, claiming authority over the temple.

Then the drama focuses on the two witnesses. These are not two external prophets but two faculties in the psyche that witness truth: imagination and feeling, or imagination and word. They stand before the God of the earth, the God that lives as your creative power. Clothed in sackcloth they represent a humbled, concentrated state, a refusal of the ego's frivolity. In this stripped-down posture the faculties prophesy for a defined time. To prophesy here is to operate with the creative faculty: to live in an imagined end so fully that it speaks forth into experience.

That fire proceeding from their mouths and devouring their enemies is the consuming potency of a concentrated, spoken imaginings. The words you hold in imagination, seasoned by feeling, have the power to dissolve contradictions and false appearances. The power to shut heaven, to prevent rain, is the ability to withhold consent to unwanted conditions. When imagination and feeling decide to refuse a reality, they dry up its apparent supply. Turning waters into blood and smiting the earth with plagues are metaphors for transforming neutral perception into vivid conviction. Blood stands for life, vivid feeling. The witnesses, by their internal decrees, can alter the quality of the inner atmosphere and thus the reflection you perceive externally.

The beast that comes up out of the abyss and wages war against the witnesses is the negative self-image or the lower identity that arises from fear and dried-out belief. Born from the abyss means it emerges from the shadow self, from the reservoir of rejected parts. It overwhelms and seemingly kills the witnesses when that lower identity convinces you that your imaginative declarations are foolish, that the inner prophesy cannot be trusted. The symbolic death of the witnesses is the moment of apparent failure when your creative acts seem to miscarry and the world continues to reflect the old form.

Their dead bodies lying in the street of the great city—in the place which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt—illustrates how the imaginative faculties appear discredited in the marketplace of your life. Sodom and Egypt are states of mind characterized by indulgence in sensory evidence and bondage to history. The public, the habitual mind, sees the 'death' and refuses to bury it. In the marketplace of the senses the imaginative faculty is ridiculed and disregarded, and people celebrate the failure because they prefer the familiarity of the old reality.

But after three days and a half the Spirit of life from God enters them and they stand upon their feet. This is the turning point: the resurrection is an inner revival of conviction. Three and a half days indicate a transition that is neither instant nor endless; it is the interval necessary for the subconscious to absorb a new assumption. The Spirit of life is the living imagination that reanimates the supposedly dead power within. When the imagination is re-enlivened, when feeling is rekindled, the faculties rise and become visible again. Those who saw them are thrown into fear; the world trembles because an inner creative conviction has returned stronger and wiser.

Then the voice from heaven calls them to come up, and they ascend in a cloud. The ascent is the elevation of the operative imagination into a higher state of consciousness. The cloud is the cloud of unmanifest potential—the place of ideas not yet crystallized into the senses. To be called up is to be acknowledged by the higher Self; the witnesses are no longer separated servants but recognized as aspects of the single creative consciousness. Their enemies behold them; the same world that rejoiced at their death must now face the evidence of their power.

The great earthquake and the falling of a tenth part of the city describe the inevitable outer changes that occur when inner authority is re-established. Transformation at the center shakes the structures of your life; old loyalties dissolve, some relationships fall away, and a remnant is left that recognizes the shift and gives glory to the creative source. The earthquake is not punishment so much as correction: a redistribution of value as inner leadership is restored.

When the seventh angel sounds and the proclamation rings that the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ, the text is announcing a turning in consciousness: the reign of the higher imagination over the old kingdoms of opinion and fear. This is the discovery that what you once called outer reality is actually the extension of inner assumptions. The elders who fall down and worship represent the settled beliefs that finally surrender and give thanks when they perceive that the creative mind is sovereign.

Finally, the temple of God opened in heaven and the ark of the covenant is seen. In psychological terms, the heavenly temple is the higher mind or the realm of true principle within you. The ark—the symbol of covenant and remembrance—appearing there signifies that the core tenet of identity is now revealed and honored: the covenant between consciousness and its creative principle is restored. Lightnings, voices, thunderings and hail are the dramatic inner phenomena of revelation. They are the sudden insights, the inner thunderclaps and purifying blows that accompany the inward unveiling of a new law. Hail can be read as the final purgation of beliefs that cannot survive the light of the new imagination.

Throughout this chapter the essential teaching is that imagination is the operative power. Nothing external has power except as it is authorized by your inner state. The two witnesses, humble and faithful, are the practiced imaginal faculties that speak and feel an end until it lives. Their apparent defeat is the necessary dark night in which the world tests your conviction. The resurrection is not an event performed on a distant hill but the inner return of life to the imagination. Ascension is the inward elevation of identity into its creative source. The trumpets and the opening of the heavenly temple are the outer correspondences of an interior sovereignty reclaimed.

If you are the active reader of this drama, the instruction is precise: measure your temple with attention, protect the sanctuary from the trampling opinions of the crowd, cultivate the two witnesses—imagination and feeling—by practice and humility, and persist through the interval of apparent failure. The Spirit of life will enter when you refuse to be convinced by appearances, and your world will respond with its own trembling and rearrangement. The kingdom that rules your life is ultimately the kingdom you entertain within, and Revelation 11 is the psychodrama that shows how the creative imagination dies, is reborn, and finally takes its rightful throne within human consciousness.

Common Questions About Revelation 11

How does Neville Goddard interpret the two witnesses in Revelation 11?

Neville identifies the two witnesses as operative states within consciousness — the active, creative imagination and its faithful, receptive counterpart — that stand before the God of the earth and testify to a chosen reality (Rev 11). Clothed in sackcloth they show humility and concentrated desire; when they 'prophesy' they enact the assumption until it hardens into fact. Their apparent death and three-and-a-half-day lying in the street symbolize the period when outer senses deny the inward word, followed by the inevitable resurrection when the Spirit of life reenters the assumed state and it manifests. The lesson is to persist in the inner conviction despite external contradiction.

What is the main message of Revelation 11 from a Neville Goddard perspective?

Neville Goddard teaches that Revelation 11 is an inner drama about the sovereignty of imagination and the measurement of consciousness; it invites the reader to rise and 'measure' the inner temple, distinguishing the sanctified state from the outer world (Rev 11). The two witnesses represent inner faculties that declare a new assumed reality until that state is fulfilled, even enduring apparent death before resurrection. The loud voices, earthquake and the ark in the temple are symbolic of the vindication of an assumed state when imagination is sustained as fact. Practically, the chapter assures that persistent assumption and feeling ultimately transform outer experience into the reality you have lived within.

How can I apply Revelation 11 imagery for manifestation and imaginative prayer?

Use the chapter as a guide for imaginative prayer: measure your temple by defining the inner state you will inhabit and leave the outer court, the world of appearances, uninterested (Rev 11). Envision the two witnesses by embodying the assumption with feeling and silence the doubting senses so heaven is not 'shut.' When desires seem dead, sustain the inner scene until the Spirit of life revives it; expect a symbolic 'ascension' as the natural result of persistent feeling of the wish fulfilled. Practically, assume the fulfilled state, feel it vividly at night, and live from that end until outer events conform to your inner reality.

What does 'measuring the temple' mean in Neville's teaching about consciousness?

In Neville's teaching, to 'measure the temple' is to take inventory of and define the inner sanctuary — the state you occupy — marking what is holy within your consciousness and ignoring the outer court given to appearances (Rev 11). Measuring is not external judgment but a deliberate act of self-observation and selection: you identify the boundaries of your assumed state, attend to its details, and populate it with sensory feeling. This interior measurement determines what may be manifest; therefore persistently inhabit the measured inner temple, for imagination directed and sustained brings its dimensions into outward expression as the temple of your manifested life.

Are there Neville Goddard lectures or videos that specifically address Revelation 11?

Yes, Neville spoke frequently about Revelation imagery and the dynamics of the two witnesses, measuring, and resurrection as metaphors of consciousness; many of his lectures and recordings touch on these themes even when not titled exactly 'Revelation 11.' You will find audio and transcripts in collections of his work under topics like 'The Two Witnesses,' 'Assume the Feeling,' and 'The Resurrection of the Inner Man.' If a specific lecture on chapter eleven is not obvious, seek teachings on assumption, imagination, and the inner temple, because those expositions unpack Revelation 11 practically and provide methods for imaginative prayer and living from the end.

Is Revelation 11 a prophecy or an allegory about awakening the inner self according to Neville?

Neville would say Revelation 11 functions as both prophecy and allegory: prophetic in the sense that imagination is the creative word whose fulfillment is foreordained by persistent assumption, and allegorical as it describes the inner process of awakening and vindication of the assumed state (Rev 11). The 'prophecy' occurs inwardly when one assumes and maintains the end; the outward events follow. The death and resurrection of the two witnesses depict the necessary passage through apparent contradiction before the inner reality is realized. Thus the chapter calls for conscious living in the end and patient, faithful imagination until the inner testimony becomes visible.