7 When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them, and overcome them, and kill them.
when they have finished their testimony – Jan Huss was burned at the stake in 1415.
His death caused outrage in Bohemia, and resulted in an army of “Hussites.” Many preachers, and writers challenged all of the corruptions of the Catholic Church; and focused on the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount as the way of life for all Christians; and preached purity, sacrificial love, and the avoidance of worldly pursuits.
But perhaps the greatest desire of Bohemians was a separation from the corrupted Church itself, which they called as the whore of Babylon, and they called the Pope, the Antichrist.
Despite their hatred of the Church, they were afraid to reject its historically held authority, and they were forced to rely on the priests of the Church for the observance of communion and baptisms. And they questioned why they needed to confess their sins to men with the mark of the beast on their foreheads.
Finally, in 1467, a most devout group of Hussites, called the “Unity of the Brethren” gathered the courage to declare their complete separation from the Catholic Church. At the Synod of Lhota, in 1467, they drew from 12 slips of paper, to select three brothers, as the ministers of the new Church. And these three ministers rebaptized all their members.
Fearing that the common people would not accept these new ministers, without proper “apostolic authority,” the Brethren approached Bishop Stephan, a Bishop of the Waldensian sect. The Waldensian sect believed that Stephan’s succession in the position of bishop could be traced back to the Apostles themselves, and his pious and blameless life made him a perfect witness. And Bishop Stephan was more than happy to ordain the new clergyman.
the beast that comes up out of the abyss – this is of course “the beast” in Revelation 13; “the beast…that will ascend out of the abyss” in Rev 17:8 , the religious-political power that oppressed the saints. The Ten European states gave “their power and authority to the beast,” as described in Rev 17:13.
Understanding that the beast which comes from the abyss is the same beast in Rev 17:8, is yet another proof of this prophecy. This is the same religious-political beast described in Revelation 17.
will kill them – after the clergymen of the Moravian Church were ordained by the Waldensian Bishop, he was burned at the stake in August of 1467. The brethren were hunted like deer, and slaughtered in the forests of Bohemia, until 1471.