Revelation: Part 49

When anyone anywhere, responds to this knowledge by having a desire to know this God, God will move heaven and earth to get the message to them.

Revelation 17. I want to read the whole chapter before we start seeking to understand it. But when I read, you know, a lot of people when you read the Scripture first, they kind of turn their mind off and think about their laundry list or whatever. This is the time to really pay attention.

Because this will unlock a great deal as we go through. All right. And, you know, your best friend in interpreting the Bible, I have six friends. Who, what, where, why, when, so what.

All right, here we go. Verse 1. Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me. Now, the last time we studied in chapter 16, I brought out the fact that these are talking about the seven golden censers that were used in the temple.

And these were the ones that were poured out, the most horrible judgments of all time, the seven that are in chapter 16. So now, this is a flashback to explain the why of some of the most awful things that are gonna happen to the world in the future. Then one of the seven angels who had the seven golden censers came and spoke with me saying, come here. I will show you the judgment of the great whore who sits on many waters with whom the kings of the earth committed acts of immorality, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality.

And he carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns. Now, I might point out that the ten horns are on one of the heads, not, you know, scattered on the various ones. There’s seven heads, and the one that is prominent.

The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls. Having in her hand a gold goblet, full of abominations and the unclean things of her immorality. And on her forehead a name was written, a mystery, Babylon the great, mother of whores and of abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus.

And when I saw her, I wondered greatly. And the angel said to me, why do you wonder? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns. The beast that you saw was, is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss and go to destruction.

And those who dwell on the earth whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will wonder when they see the beast, that he was, is not, and yet will come. Here’s the mind that has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. And there are also seven kingdoms.

Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come. And when it comes, it must remain a little while. The beast which was and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is one of the seven, and he goes to destruction. Or literally, he leads to destruction.

The ten horns which you saw, are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom. But they receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour. These have one purpose and they give their power and authority to the beast. These will wage war against the Lamb and the Lamb will overcome them because he is Lord of lords and king of kings.

And those who are with him are called chosen and faithful. And he said to me, the waters which you saw where the harlot sits, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues. The ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will hate the harlot and will make her desolate and naked and will eat her flesh and will burn her up with fire. For God has put it in their hearts to execute his purpose by having a common purpose and by giving their kingdom to the beast until the words of God will be fulfilled.

And the woman -I have this in my notes introduced, and the whore is. The woman whom you saw is the great city which is reigning over the kings of the earth. Obviously, these are figures of speech. They’re symbols that are used in the first part as in many parts of the book of Revelation.

But, did you note that the angel told John here is the mind that has wisdom. That was the plot point. That was where the chapter turned. Because he was introducing the fact that he was going to explain the meaning of all of those figures used in the beginning of the chapter.

And he does. Now, see, the book of Revelation really isn’t that difficult to interpret. I don’t know why it is difficult for many people to interpret, but most people just fail to realize that the book of Revelation explains itself. And if the figures of speech used here are not explained in the immediate context, they’re explained somewhere else in the Bible.

All you have to do is take a concordance and start going through and tracking these words and the Bible itself will explain those symbols. And the Holy Spirit used John to write this book in such a way, that the Bible would be its own encyclopedia for it. The Bible itself is the encyclopedia for the book of Revelation. There are two major items in this chapter that are explained.

The harlot and the beast. Now, there are many factors to the harlot and to the beast, but the two main driving forces that are explained here are the harlot and the beast. Okay. So when it says one of the seven angels who had the seven golden censers came and spoke with me saying, come here, and I will show you the judgment of the great whore who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed acts of immorality, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality.

Now, we have to take a good look at this woman. He said that he was gonna talk about her, but in verse 3 it says, he carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness. And wilderness is used in a figurative sense here. Because what the Holy Spirit wants us to see is that it is this mystery, this Babylon the great, this harlot, that has turned the world into a jungle.

Turned the world into a wilderness. And so the Holy Spirit takes him to a wilderness. And it says, I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns. All right, now, why is she called a prostitute?

Why does it refer to -that God sees this as a great, terrible thing that the kings of the earth have prostituted themselves with her, and, also, all the peoples on the earth have committed immorality with her. Sexual immorality is the word. You see, this is a figure of speech that’s carefully developed in the Bible. The idea of religious prostitution.

In other words, in the spiritual sense, a figure of speech, using the whore as a figure of speech is a false religious system. And it’s saying that the terrible things that develop and come to a head in this Tribulation period of seven years, were actually caused by this false religious system, and the fact that this religious system has drawn all people into participating in her prostitution. Her prostitution of truth. Now, Hosea 9:1, it says, do not rejoice, o Israel, with joy like other peoples.

For you have played the harlot against your God. You have made love for hire on every threshing floor. Pretty graphic, isn’t it? And in the context it’s talking about the fact that it had left the truth and begun to follow the false religions around them.

Now, look -don’t look it up, write it down. Jeremiah 3:6. The Lord said also to me in the days of josiah, the king, have you seen what backsliding Israel has done? She has gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree and there played the whore.

Ezekiel 23:19. Yet she multiplied her harlotry in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, when she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt. In every case this is talking about forsaking the truth of God and following false religion. Now, lest we think only Israel does that, Nahum 3:4 says -and I want to bring in a new dimension to this -all because of the wanton lust of a whore, alluring the mistress of sorcery who enslaved nations by her prostitution and peoples by her witchcraft.

You see, this brings out the fact that -and this, by the way, is talking about the last days. This is talking about what this scarlet or harlot is gonna do in the last days. It brings in the fact that this religious prostitution involves with it sorcery and witchcraft. Demons.

And that this false religious system will be energized by demons. Just as it has been in history. But all of this is going to come to this gigantic head during the final seven years. That’s where you’re gonna find demons involved in deceiving and deception in this religious system that’s gonna be spread over the whole world.

Now, in Psalms 106, verses 36 to 38, it says, and you served their idols which became a snare to them, and they even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to what? Demons. See, they sacrifice their sons and daughters, Israel at one time did, to baal. And baal had these big impressive idols.

But behind idols are always demons. And it brings it out clearly here that they didn’t sacrifice the idols, they sacrificed the demons. Now, in verse 38, and shed innocent blood and the blood of their sons and their daughters whom they sacrificed to idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with the blood. In Leviticus 17:7, they shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat demons which they have played with and play the harlot.

This shall be a permanent statue to them throughout their generations. So we can see that the idea of harlotry, and when used figuratively, a prostitute, is talking about a false religious system. So when we look at this woman, it is a religious system. And that’s part of what it means, the mystery of the woman.

Okay. Now, and he carried me away in the spirit again into the wilderness and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns. All right, so we see the woman and it’s the same woman that’s explained in verse 18 at the end of the chapter. But the woman is then described as this great whore.

Mystery Babylon the great, mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. And so, it says that the woman is riding this scarlet-colored beast. All right, now, who controls where you’re gonna go when you’re riding a horse? The horse or the guy sitting up on top?

All right. Notice who’s riding the beast. It’s the prostitute. And she is in control at the beginning.

But as we saw in some verses at the end of this chapter, the beast is gonna turn on this religious system and destroy it. The beast, the Antichrist, is gonna use the system to get into power. But once he gets into power, he and the ten kings with him are going to turn on this prostitute and absolutely destroy her. Now, it says the woman is sitting on a scarlet beast full of blasphemous names.

So we see here that both the religious prostitute is a false system and the beast has blasphemous names. This means blasphemous names against the true God written all over it. In other words, it’s become a permeated part of this political system, too. And so it says, verse 4, the woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls.

Now, when he sees this woman, he sees her in royal garb. Scarlet and purple were cloths that only the royalty could wear. I mean, in those days, it was very, very expensive. Purple was the most expensive cloth on earth.

And only royalty would wear this. And so he describes her as having great wealth. And a beautiful -a beautiful appearance. On the outside it looks real.

It looks beautiful. And it’s decked with all kinds of the most precious jewels on the earth. And it says, having in her hand a gold goblet. So here you see this beautiful woman, and she is dressed as royalty in the most expensive costume.

And she is adorned with the most expensive jewels on earth. And she has this beautiful golden goblet. So everything on the outside looks beautiful. But it says but on the inside of that golden goblet is what?

Abominations. Abominations, by the way are -if something is called an abomination, it means it’s beyond regular sin. It means this is something that is especially an affront to God. And it is something that God particularly will judge.

Can you think of an abomination that’s prominent around this place? Homosexuality is called an abomination in many places in the Bible. And it’s full of unclean things of her immorality. Now, then in verse 5 it says, and on her forehead a name was written, a mystery.

Whenever you hear a word in the Bible that something is a mystery, it means this is something really important to listen to and understand. In other words, there’s several mysteries that are introduced in the New Testament. And the word, musterion, is an ancient Greek word. It came from the ancient Greek secret fraternities.

And there were always musterions for every one of these Greek fraternities. And so looking that up, it’s easy to see what is the meaning of this. A mystery, musterion, means something that can only be known by the initiated members. But not understood by those that are not.

And this is used here in the sense, it’s used in the Bible in the sense that a mystery is something that a believer in Jesus Christ can understand, but the world cannot. Oh, they can hear the words, they can follow along, but to really understand the meaning and the significance of something, is only open to those that are taught by the Holy Spirit. And so it’s interesting that he starts off by introducing this woman really, by saying it’s a mystery. Something that the angel will have to tell us about in the latter part of the chapter, something he will explain.

So he says a mystery. Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth. Man, what a strong title, huh? Babylon the great.

You see, the Bible always follows a thread. On every important truth in the Word of God, it will be introduced in embryonic form in the beginning of the Bible and it will be traced through and then it will be brought to full description as we reach the end. Babylon, the plains of shinar, that is the place where organized false religion first started. So when he says, Babylon, mystery Babylon, it’s talking about the fact that man’s false religion as an organized system started in Babylon on the plains of shinar.

The mystery of false religion started in Babylon, permeated and carried through all of these Gentile powers. And will reach its worst in our near future. So it says that she is the mother of harlots, harlots being false religious systems, and of the abominations of the earth. In other words, the worst kind of sins.

It all came out of here. In verse 6, and I saw the woman drunk. Now, up until this time, you know, you can just imagine how John must have felt. Put yourself in his shoes or in his sandals.

Think of the impact on him of what he was seeing. And just imagine that you were there. I mean, this was a dazzling display that he is seeing. And on the outside, it’s absolutely amazing.

And, you know, evil, and false religious systems, frankly, can put on a dazzling display. They can be very inviting. They can be very deceptive. They can really draw you in.

But as he’s looking, he sees that this woman is drunk. With all of her beauty, with all of her dazzling apparel and jewelry, she’s drunk. But when he sees what’s made her drunk, his blood must have run cold.

If you have the guts to be a real revolutionary, come forward right now and accept Jesus Christ as your real revolutionary, and he’ll make a revolutionary that will change lives. As I prepared for this week’s program, I was again struck by the speed with which events are moving into the scenario the prophets predicted for the end times. I believe we’re there. People on the street are talking about what all of these things mean.

Folks that wouldn’t darken the door of a Church or pick up a Bible, are now very curious. This may be our greatest opportunity, maybe even our last opportunity, to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ before we’re silenced by political correctness. The message that God has given me is more important now than it’s ever been for the Church and for the nation.