Anti-Christ will be a great electrician; electricity by that time will be a fearful power in the hands of science. Edison with his genius and marvellous discoveries, and others of like gifts, will have perfected the use of this agent in a wonderful degree. Anti-Christ will make use of this power to cower his enemies and bring them in fear-subjection. He will bring fire down from heaven. The two witnesses, however, will be clothed with Divine power; they will be able to bring fire by a simple command—this they both understood and used when on earth.
Moses called fire down upon the 250 rebellious Korahthites, as we read in Numbers xvi. Ahab, the King of Israel, thought to punish and compel the obedience of Elijah; but God gave fire from heaven in answer to the prophet’s prayer. So when Ahaziah sent a captain and fifty men to bring Elijah into the king’s presence, they found him sitting on the top of a hill and commanded him to come down. “And Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty, If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty” (2 Kings i. 10). Thus will these two anointed ones be able to contend with Anti-Christ and all the powers of scientific infidels. “If any man hurt these two witnesses, by the very means used so shall they be killed.”
“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.” To whom would these gifts and attributes apply better than to Elijah, who in the days of the wicked King Ahab sealed the heavens against rain for three years and a half? and to Moses, who, when contending with Pharaoh, turned the sweet flowing Nile into a stream of blood? What two prophets had such a wide range of prophetic energy and liberty as Moses and Elijah? None. Well may the Revelator say, then, of them, that they can smite the earth with all manner of plagues as often as they will.
By awful and sublime manifestations the world shall see that God rules in the heaven and on the earth. They shall learn that Anti-Christ is a false Christ. Then shall fear and repentance fall upon the people. The Jews shall be convinced, and converted, and persuaded by the appearance of their beloved Moses. They shall know of a truth that the Messiah has been, and is waiting to come again. Referring to that time the prophet Zechariah calls it a time of trembling, the time of a terrible siege. But he tells us that “The Lord also shall save the tents of Judah first, that the glory of the House of David, and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, do not magnify themselves against Judah.” Thus we learn that the Jews, who have been so long despised and bereft of a king, country, and government, shall see through the great mystery of Providence first. The House of David is found in the royal family of England. The Jews, seeing this, will invite, in concert with all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the English Government to take charge of their affairs.