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Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
The Two Witnesses of Revelation 11 Are Two Specific Individuals (Enoch and Elijah, or Moses and Elijah)
Heiser argues the two witnesses more likely symbolize the people of God than two named individuals, but he's explicit this is a reading, not a proof.
Revelation 11:3-13, in every translation this tool compares.
The popular guessing game (usually Moses and Elijah, sometimes Enoch and Elijah) leans on real details: the witnesses "have the power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall" (echoing Elijah in 1 Kings 17) and "power over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague" (echoing Moses in Exodus). Heiser's first objection is a consistency problem: verse 5 also has fire pouring from their mouths to consume their enemies, and nobody argues that's two men who literally breathe fire. His question is why the rest of the passage gets read literally and then quietly switches to figurative exactly where literalism becomes absurd.
His stronger argument is that the text identifies the witnesses itself: "the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth" (Rev 11:4) is a direct pull from Zechariah 4's "two sons of oil," set inside a heavenly, divine-council vision about the Spirit-empowered restoration of God's people ("Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit," Zech 4:6). On that reading the two witnesses represent the redeemed people of God testifying under persecution, not two individual prophets. Heiser also notes Revelation 11 and 12 share the exact same time language (1,260 days / "a time, times, and half a time," both from Daniel 7:25 and 12:7) and reads them as the same reality: the woman and her offspring in chapter 12 (defined as "those who hold to the testimony of Jesus") persecuted the same way the witnesses are in chapter 11.
Heiser is careful to flag this as an argued position, not a closed case: it even notes that a major commentator (Beale) lands in essentially the same "people of God" place but still calls the witnesses "Elijah and Moses who symbolize the church," splitting the difference rather than dropping the individual figures entirely. What is treated as more solid is a negative point: the popular claim that Revelation 11 requires an actual rebuilt Temple and restored sacrifices is rejected outright, since Hebrews teaches Christ's atonement is sufficient once for all, and Jewish people are shown coming to faith in Christ constantly with no Temple and no sacrifices required.
