490. "And I will give power to my two witnesses." (11:3) This symbolizes those people who confess and acknowledge from the heart that the Lord is God of heaven and earth, whose humanity is Divine, and who are conjoined with Him by a life in accordance with the Ten Commandments.

These are the people meant here by the two witnesses because these two characteristics are the two essential elements of the New Church.

Regarding the first essential, that the Lord is God of heaven and earth, whose humanity is Divine - that this is a testimony, and therefore that those people are witnesses who confess and acknowledge this from the heart, may be seen in nos. 6 and 846, and still further from the following:

I am your fellow servant... of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus... For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. (Revelation 19:10)

(Michael's angels) overcame (the dragon) by the blood of the Lamb and by the Word of His testimony... And the dragon... went away to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. (Revelation 12:11, 17)

...the souls of those who had been beheaded because of the testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God... (Revelation 20:4)

These are people who have acknowledged the Lord.

The testimony is called the testimony of Jesus because the Lord attests to it on the authority of His Word, thus on the authority of Himself. Therefore He is called the faithful and true witness (Revelation 1:5; 3:14); and He says,

...I testify of Myself, (and) My testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going. (John 8:14)

Also,

When the Counselor comes..., the spirit of truth..., it will testify of Me. (John 15:26)

The Counselor, the spirit of truth, which is also the Holy Spirit, is an emanating Divinity, and this is the Lord Himself, as may be seen in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord, nos. 46-54.

Now because the Lord Himself is the witness, therefore witnesses also mean people who bear the same testimony on behalf of the Lord, as in John:

(Jesus said,) "You have sent to John, and he was a witness to the truth. Yet I do not receive testimony from man... (John 5:33-34)

(John) came as testimony, to testify concerning the light... He was not that light, but was sent to testify concerning the light. (The Word that was with God, and was God,) was the true light... (John 1:1-2ff.; see also 1:14, 1:34)

[2] Regarding the second essential of the New Church, namely conjunction with the Lord by a life in accordance with the Ten Commandments - that this is a testimony is apparent from the fact that the Ten Commandments are called a testimony, as in the following:

You shall put into the ark the Testimony which I will give you. (Exodus 25:16)

...the Testimony...(Moses) put into the ark... (Exodus 40:20)

...the mercy seat that is upon the Testimony... (Leviticus 16:13)

(Leave the rods of the tribes) before the Testimony... (Numbers 17:4)

And so, too, elsewhere, as in Exodus 25:22; 31:7, 18; 32:15, Psalms 78:5; 132:12.

[3] We will say something here regarding conjunction with the Lord by a life in accordance with the Ten Commandments:

There are two tables on which these commandments were written, one for the Lord and one for mankind. The contents of the first table declare that several gods are not to be worshiped, but only one. The contents of the second table declare that evils are not to be done. When one God is worshiped and people do not do evils, conjunction takes place. For in the measure that a person desists from evils, that is, in the measure that he repents, he is in the same measure accepted by God and does good from God.

But who, now, is the one God? A trinal or triune God is not one God when the trine or trinity exists in three persons. But a God who has a trine or trinity in one person is one God, and that God is the Lord. Weave your ideas as you may, you still will not extricate from the tangle the existence of one God unless He is also one in person.

The fact of this is something the whole Word teaches, both the Old Prophetic Word and the New Apostolic Word, as may be clearly seen from The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord.

846. I also saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the Word of God. This symbolically means, who had been rejected by those caught up in falsities hatched out of their own intelligence, because they worshiped the Lord and lived in accordance with the truths in His Word.

The souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the Word of God mean people after death, who are then called spirits, people clothed in a spiritual body, who were hidden away by the Lord in the lower earth until the evil had been removed by the Last Judgment. They are said to have been beheaded because they were rejected by people caught up in falsities hatched out of their own intelligence, who are all those caught up in evils and so in falsities, or in falsities and as a result of these in evils, and yet in outward appearances are worshipers of God.

That an axe symbolizes such falsity will be seen in the following number. The testimony of Jesus and the Word of God symbolize an acknowledgment of the Lord's Divinity in His humanity, the same as these words earlier:

(John) bore witness to the Word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ... (Revelation 1:2)

(Michael and his angels) overcame (the dragon) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony... (Revelation 12:11)

(The dragon) went off to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. (Revelation 12:17)

I am your fellow servant and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus... ...the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. (Revelation 19:10)

That these declarations symbolize an acknowledgment of the Lord's Divinity in His humanity and a life in accordance with the truths in His Word, especially the Ten Commandments, may be seen in the earlier explanations of those verses.

These souls are the same ones of whom the following is said above:

...I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, who are holy and true, will You not judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" Then white robes were given to each of them; and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer, until the number of both their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was complete. (Revelation 6:9-11)

These verses may be seen explained in nos. 325-329.