“And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.”
When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them — after 1,260 days of testimony, the beast (therion, monster) ascends from the abyss and wages war (polemeo) against the witnesses, conquers, and kills them. The beast's emergence indicates the final intensification of evil; the witnesses' death represents the apparent triumph of evil before God's vindication.
Church Fathers on Revelation 11:7
“And the beast which ascends from the abyss.” After many plagues completed in the world, in the end he says that a beast ascended from the abyss. But that he shall ascend from the abyss is proved by many testimonies; for he says in the thirty-first chapter of Ezekiel: “Behold, Assur was a cypress in Mount Lebanon.” Assur, deeply rooted, was a lofty and branching cypress — that is, a numerous people — in Mount Lebanon, in the kingdom of kingdoms, that is, of the Romans.…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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